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Take a look at this Ponzi scheme: it is said to be Spain's largest, €3 billion that belonged to 300,000 people vanished. The brains behind it was José Manuel Carlos Llorca Rodriguez, a man with six different identities and passports that provided money laundering services to arms dealers, drug traffickers and the corrupt. Llorca, described as a "one-man offshore jurisdiction" and a "walking Swiss bank" for his ability to move and launder money undetected, was also involved in one of Spain's largest corruption schemes (Malaya). Documents seen by this site would suggest that many years before scandal of Banca Privada d'Andorra (BPA) Diego Salazar was also a client.
Fleeing prosecution in Europe, Llorca landed at some point in Venezuela (Margarita island). Spanish intelligence located him around 2008 and formally requested Venezuelan authorities to arrest and extradite him. But this being Venezuela, just before the arrest Llorca was alerted and bribed his way out. He has not been located or seen ever since.
A group of influential Venezuelan authorities were aware of Spain's intentions regarding Llorca: Deyanira Nieves Bastidas, Ramon Rodriguez Chacin, Luisa Ortega Diaz, and Ysmel Serrano Flores. Venezuela's Supreme Court eventually decided that since Llorca had not been arrested and was not in custody, Spain's extradition request was inadmissible.
With the above as background we analysed a set of documents related to Advanced Appraisal Consultoria e Planejamento Ltda., which starting December 2005 entered into a series of contracts worth around $180 million to value nearly all PDVSA assets (both local & international), including all of Venezuela's oil wells, Orinoco Belt, JVs, CITGO, HOVENSA, Nynas and Rühr Oel GmgH. The title of the main contract was "Servicio de asesoria profesional especializada en el area de avaluo de activos para Petroleos de Venezuela S.A. y sus filiales, o empresas señaladas por PDVIC."
Most of those contracts were signed between Eudomario Carruyo / Jesus Villanueva (on behalf of PDVSA and PDV Insurance) and Carlos Eduardo Pascale Gonsales (Brazilian passports FP379753, FD2221O). These were the times when Rafael Ramirez was both Venezuela's Energy Minister and PDVSA's CEO, and his first cousin Diego Salazar was the insurance king.
Advanced also signed a $135 million contract with CORPOELEC (Nicolas Veracierta acting on Board's behalf) in 2010. The object was to assess value of all of its assets, like with PDVSA. At the time, another associate of Salazar was head of CORPOELEC (Javier Alvarado). Veracierta would then get hundreds of thousands worth of bribe payments from Salazar's bank accounts in Andorra.
Advanced Appraisal is a Brazilian group of companies that has a number of similarly named subsidiaries around the world. Advanced had contracts with Ivercent Corp. (Diego Salazar) for generation of business with Venezuelan institutions.
The bulk of Advanced contracts with PDVSA were managed by subsidiaries in Madeira, Portugal, UK and Hong Kong, which were in turn used to transfer tens of millions to HighRise Proyects S.A., a company controlled by Salazar through his proxy Luis Mariano Rodriguez, and to Greentrail International Inc., a shell controlled by Jose Luis Zabala, another associate of Salazar.
One invoice from Hong Kong-registered Eastern Appraisal Limited, dated June 15 2009, contains description of a $250,000 technical advisory sub contract with Hector Ciavaldini, a former PDVSA CEO. Ciavaldini's shell (Venezuela's International Consultants EEMM 2003) were subcontractors of Advanced in provision of valuations of oil wells, oil belt, JVs, and refineries.
Most of the bribe payments from Salazar or his Brazilian partners were dealt with by Deutsche Bank's Filipe Vicente.
The structure of Advanced was multi jurisdictional. Halkyn Global, a Seychelles trust controlled by Panama's Eastglade Investments, was the ultimate beneficiary owner (Carlos Eduardo Pascale Gonsales) of the Advanced group. It included Swiss, American, Portuguese and Canadian subsidiaries. The Panamanian and Hong Kong outfits were controlled from Canada. The face of Hong Kong's Eastern Appraisal Limited is Francesco Righini, a Swiss national (passport F2970199) who also registered the Swiss branch.
Eastglade was also the proxy for Seguconsult Ltd, another Seychelles trust recipient of Advanced bribes. Its UBO was Zabala, partner of both Salazar and Alvarado. Greentrail International and Moraleja Holdings Ltd (shells controlled by Zabala), got millions from Advanced, as did Inverdt Advisors, yet a third Salazar-controlled shell mentioned in criminal files from Andorra seen by this site.
Zabala and Salazar made multiple wire transfers, worth millions of dollars, to each other's shells through BPA.
Separate evidence from EFG Bank related to another multibillion dollar scam at PDVSA -perpetrated by Luis and Ignacio Oberto Anselmi- provides corroboration of details of Salazar's HighRise accounts.
But then, among the myriad bribes wired to different shells associated to Salazar, there's this one whereby (Marshall Islands) Hornchurch International Limited requests $348,530 from Eastern Appraisal Limited, for "Fees in relation to our participation in the performance of evaluation services as per signed agreement." It is dated October 10, 2010.
Further searches for Hornchurch lead to Advanced Appraisal and Consulting Limited and shells associated to Llorca's Ponzi in Spain.
As recently as December 2017, Pascale Gonsales signed a contract with Miguel Silva Perez using Llorca's and Salazar's favourite UK proxies.
