Angel Villarino from El Confidencial has recently published the first accurate profile of the mega-corrupt Venezuelan Alejandro Betancourt. It has taken a long time for Spanish media to uncover what we’ve been shouting out loud in Venezuela: Derwick Associates is a den of corruption, and everything that comes from it is nothing but variations of familiar themes like embezzlement and money laundering.
The lengthy article by Villarino reveals a couple of details I wasn’t aware of:
1) Otto Reich, after much fighting, ended up working for the lobbying firm (Ballard Partners) hired by a company controlled by Betancourt (Hawkers);
2) a frontman for Betancourt (José Ramón Blanco Balín) has just been accepted by Nicolás Maduro’s regime as a partner of PDVSA in a so-called strategic partnership named PETROSUR. Quoting Villarino:
The Venezuelan seems to open many doors for those around him. There’s José Ramón Blanco Balín, former vice president of Repsol, implicated in several pieces of the Gürtel case as a “money launderer” for Correa and a person very close to Betancourt in Madrid. On July 10th, he obtained authorization from the Supreme Court of Justice of Venezuela to exploit part of the reserve known as the Orinoco Oil Belt alongside a subsidiary of Petróleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA), with Petrosur SA.
One should ask, given Mr. Blanco’s criminal past, what credentials did he present to the Supreme Court of Justice to secure such a deal and be favored by PDVSA? Aside from the irregularity of the highest tribunal of the country approving commercial agreements that are exclusively the competence of the National Assembly of Venezuela, let’s ask differently: without the “good auspices” of Betancourt, why would Nicolás Maduro entertain proposals from shell companies “managed” by Blanco?
Blanco set up a front in Amsterdam, quite similar to the one Derwick had already established with Gazprombank in that same city. A vehicle called Inversiones Petroleras Iberoamericanas, whose Spanish naming includes several of Betancourt’s Spanish partners (map), is owned by another company of the same name registered in Cyprus. All this aims to conceal the name of the one controlling everything and who generated the business: Betancourt.
Thus, following the conclusion of the power plant deals, there are now two Venezuelan oil companies of the bolichico: Petrozamora and Petrosur. The first, in partnership with Russian Gazprom, must have already generated returns in the billions of dollars. As for the second? Time will tell. What is undeniable is that Betancourt always thrives with Chavismo, with Chavez or without him.