Since 2013, Spain has been engulfed in a public scandal involving a group of Venezuelans and the censorship of a journalism professional. Why? Because Miguel Palomo-Danko (son of the famous bullfighter Palomo Linares) and his wife (Marta González) are going through a contentious divorce after 5 years of marriage. Marta González is a journalist and the daughter of another famous Spanish bullfighter (Dámaso González). The divorce of Miguel Palomo-Danko is making headlines. What’s interesting is that this is not just a simple divorce between bullfighter descendants. No. The tentacles and money from PDVSA and the Venezuelan public treasury are involved from start to finish. Yet, none of the Spanish media seem to realize the economic background of the case and how a group of Venezuelan criminals are buying their way into Spanish society with ill-gotten gains.
I have been told that young Miguel’s wife caught him in bed with a Venezuelan woman: Lilia Jimena Begoña Guzmán de Frutos López. This Venezuelan lives a luxurious life in Spain, where she owns a lavish apartment that cost millions of euros. The young woman is “dedicated” to nothing in particular while pretending to be a student. Interestingly, Jimena is the sister of Alejandro Betancourt López, the president of Derwick Associates.
Not to be left behind, Lilia Jimena López’s best friend is Helen Trebbau López, her cousin-sister, who is the sister of the vice president of Derwick Associates: Pedro Trebbau López. Young Helen is also “dedicated” to nothing in particular, even though she’s about to launch a “company” called Unyck.
Lilia Jimena came to Spain at her mother Lilia López’s insistence. Spanish newspapers describe Lilia as a “jewelry designer” and say she is a millionaire… and a well-known entrepreneur, without realizing that absolutely ALL of Lilia López’s money comes from Derwick checks transferred to her joint accounts by her son Alejandro.
The undeniable reality is that Lilia López, Alejandro Betancourt, Pedro Trebbau, Domingo Guzmán, and Francisco Convit, all partners of Derwick Associates, were clean, as we say in Venezuela, until they won the lottery with power plants that charged exorbitant prices and paid bribes to high-ranking Chavista officials in Panama banks. In the words of Gustavo Tovar Arroyo, Derwick is the “electric company that achieved the miracle of turning off Venezuela.” It is from these businesses, all with an illegal stench, that the money comes for young Helen and young Lilia Jimena to own million-euro apartments in Madrid. Their dirty money has allowed them to leave Venezuela; however, even in Madrid, their last names stink due to the activities of Alejandro Betancourt and his cousins Pedro Trebbau and Francisco Convit with Derwick.
What few know is that the mega-scandal of PDVSA’s money in Spain doesn’t end with the property purchases of Jimena and Helen. The truth is that Palomo Linares, once a married man and a 67-year-old bullfighter, was in a relationship with the mother of Lilia Jimena and Alejandro: Lilia López. In other words: a mother and daughter were sleeping with a father and son. When Palomo Linares’s wife, Marina Danko, learns that her husband is cheating, she requests a divorce. Palomo Linares, who reportedly has less than one hundred thousand euros to his name, grants Marina a divorce in record time and for an alleged multi-million sum. How does that happen? Well, Alejandro Betancourt, in other words, Derwick Associates, supplies the money (from what he extracted from PDVSA and Bariven) to settle the matters.
What a third-rate soap opera this group lives! An affair between a nearly 70-year-old bullfighter and a woman nearly of the same age, and when they are caught, the “businesswoman” uses dirty money from her son to pay off her old lover’s divorce. Soon, gossip magazines in Spain sprang into action, and articles began to appear in Hola and elsewhere about Lilia, the new “girlfriend” of the bullfighter.
Not content with having stolen Marina Danko’s husband, Lilia is the one who shoves her own daughter towards Miguel Palomo-Danko. Speculations in Spanish tabloids were constant until the obvious became public. What if Lilia had married Palomo Linares? What if Lilia Jimena had married Miguel Palomo-Danko? Would the daughter then be in a relationship with her stepbrother, and the parents of both become their in-laws? Perhaps in ancient Greece, novels were written with such sexual intrigue.
Anyway, this platform does not oppose libertinism as long as it is mutual. We live in a complicated world, and as long as we do not harm others, we should have the freedom to enjoy ourselves. However, since all this nonsense is happening with Venezuelan money stolen from the treasury, I feel it’s not just my duty but my right to express my opinion about it. In detail. The reality that many in Venezuela and Spain ignore is that currently, lawsuits are ongoing in two U.S. courts (one here, the other here) accusing Lilia Jimena’s brother, Alejandro Betancourt, and his partners of allegedly obtaining millions of dollars illegally and laundering money in the U.S.
How does Lilia get involved with the son of Palomo Linares? Simple: with money. When her favorite son and financier, Alejandro Betancourt López, decides to buy a 23 million euro estate in Spain, Lilia hires young Miguel Palomo-Danko as a “broker.” And that’s how this young man pockets almost a million euros by serving as a real estate agent.
As if that wasn’t enough, it turns out that at those apartments and palaces in Madrid and the outskirts of Toledo, Rafael Ramirez and many other Chavistas arrive, where they eat and drink the best that the new boliburguesía Alejandro Betancourt López offers, partner of Diosdado Cabello Rondon (the one involved in the 50 million dollar bribe). What neither the Palomos, nor Lilia, nor much less Alejandro expected, is that the woman they sought to destroy, the young journalist Marta Gonzalez, would persevere in the matter after years of marriage to Miguel Palomo-Danko. They especially didn’t expect that Miguel’s mother, knowing Lilia López and her daughter Jimena’s moral decay, would side with her daughter-in-law and not her son Miguel, and that Marina would explain that both divorces were due to similar reasons.
Marta, due to her presence, is perhaps a firsthand witness to many of the deals and conversations between the crooks of Derwick and high-ranking Venezuelan government officials. What is particularly interesting is that in the article “The ‘mysterious’ divorce of Marta González and Miguel Palomo Danko,” El Mundo from Madrid states that Marta “had to sign a confidentiality clause in which she committed to keeping silent about her breakup with Marina Danko’s son and the bullfighter Sebastián Palomo.” Since when do divorced parties have to agree to such arrangements? Who knows…
But that’s not where the issue ends. El Mundo continues: “In this document, Marta González agreed not to disclose any information related to the business and commercial relationships concerning companies of which Miguel Palomo Danko was or is a partner. A second point of this confidentiality clause aims to prevent disclosing or spreading any statements on social media and media outlets regarding the personal and professional lives of Alejandro Betancourt López, Lilia López, and Jimena Begoña Guzmán de Frutos López.” What does the “professional life” of Lilia and Alejandro have to do with Marta González’s divorce? Obviously, there are not just one or two cats locked up, but a whole herd!
Before signing this confidentiality clause, the young González declared to Hola: “After the marital separation of Miguel’s parents (Sebastián Palomo and Marta Danko), everything changed. The companies changed radically. We began to live in an environment that has nothing to do with my principles and values. An ostentatious lifestyle. It was the worst year of my life. I felt it wasn’t my place and distanced myself from that way of life. He decided to stay in this new environment.”
But there’s more to wrap this up with a bang. It turns out that Marta Gonzalez filed lawsuits for threats and coercion. According to the complaint, threats were allegedly received from Lilia Jimena, whom Marta is prohibited from speaking about according to the confidentiality clause. Lilia Jimena seems to carry the same gangster genes as her brother and mother. In the cited lawsuit, Marta González includes a record of calls she received and that demonstrate the threats and coercion she has endured.
Gentlemen, this is outrageous. The decay of Alejandro’s money, now in Lilia’s hands, turns the environment into something devoid of principles and values. Someone dares to reject them, and thus they seek to destroy her. What can one expect when this little group of crooks has stolen from a poor country (with a rich government) what some estimate over a billion dollars?
Anyone who doesn’t believe what’s revealed here can visit the links and verify the facts. It’s chilling, and all of this comes from various sites and newspapers considered serious in Spain.
Lilia Cristina López Fraíno, the source of the insatiable ambition of her son Alejandro, is the daughter of Lilia Margarita Fraíno Mirabal and Hermógenes López Lugo (great-grandson of General Hermógenes López Herrera, 22nd President of Venezuela). General López, Lilia’s great-grandfather, was known as “The Pig of Naguanagua.” Why such a derogatory nickname? Because the General had bad habits with public money. The Pig of Naguanagua played with the Miraflores budget. And everyone around him knew of his corruption.
Just recalling the topic of the General boils the moral, as it touches on values we believe should govern the Venezuela we desire. The descendants of that crook remind us how alive the sinister side of the 19th century is among us, the century in which the first batch of those we now call “boligarcas” lived, and back then we called them “pigs and corrupts.” Widely known in the social and cultural circles of Valencia, Lilia first married a musician, Leopoldo Betancourt. Then she divorced and married Domingo Guzmán De Frutos Arismendi. Domingo is the father of Lilia Jimena. Without a penny to her name, she enters the world of jewelry and gains some notoriety when the well-known Carolina Herrera allows her to showcase jewelry on a runway in New York. Nowadays, Carolina Herrera (just like Boris Izaguirre) doesn’t want to see Lilia, as these newly-dressed Venezuelans have done nothing but create scandals and squander money in a grotesque manner.
Lilia Lopez claims to be devoted to Nuestra Señora de Begoña, a virgin of Naguanagua, and just a few days ago, she was at the Merici Academy in Caracas doing public relations. I hope she starts praying, because if Spain discovers the origin of her funds, she will go from “millionaire” to having a very limited circle of friends in a penitentiary facility.