Life seems to be getting increasingly difficult for Derwick Associates. A Venezuelan news site reported two days ago that Thor Halvorssen (whom I worked with at The Human Rights Foundation in 2008-2009) has filed a lawsuit in Miami against Derwick Associates and its executives Leopoldo Alejandro Betancourt López and Pedro Trebbau López. Frankly, I didn’t see this coming. As far as I know, Thor is a human rights advocate. So the first question that popped into my mind was, “Why would Thor sue Derwick?” I emailed him asking for a comment, and this is what he replied:
Alek, the lawsuit can be obtained at the courthouse. My lawyers and others working with them have conducted a thorough investigation into each accusation. We expect to prove our case at trial and demand that the defendants provide documents and answer questions under oath before and during the trial. That’s the extent of our response for now. I hope you understand.
That’s a bit cryptic, right? But since this is a matter among Venezuelans, where secrets are hard to keep, I eventually managed to get a copy of the lawsuit. Thor is essentially suing for defamation. He argues that the letters from Derwick Associates’ lawyers sent to Forbes and the Huffington Post harmed his reputation, which ended his working relationship with those publications.
For me, after having written quite a bit about Derwick, the truly interesting and new parts aren’t whether Derwick damaged Thor’s reputation (given how discredited they are, I doubt anyone takes them seriously), but rather the allegations cited from “one or more former Derwick employees” claiming that Derwick paid a $50 million bribe to Diosdado Cabello, the president of the Venezuelan Congress. The bribe “was made to an offshore company registered in Panama with accounts at Banesco.” Now that’s huge. Cabello accepting bribes from Derwick Associates? Through BANESCO owned by Juan Carlos Escotet? To have “Venezuelan authorities ignore Derwick’s overpricing”?
Thor claims that Derwick has “participated in black market currency exchange” and has paid “secret money” to the CICPC (Venezuelan investigative police) “after they discovered their involvement in a multi-million dollar illegal currency exchange transaction.”
We also learned that Eloy Montenegro (father-in-law of Pedro Trebbau) boasted about his connections to the chavista regime to the extent that he knew (before the order was issued) that the Venezuelan banking regulator (SUDEBAN) would stop paying dividends to shareholders of the Banco Venezolano de Crédito due to a previous frivolous lawsuit by Derwick against that bank; and that convicted criminal, RaFa the hacker, partially owns the chavista rag Primicias24.com.
Thor’s case against Derwick means there are now two pending legal cases against them: his and Otto Reich in New York. If I’ve learned anything during my time working with Thor, it’s that he won’t jeopardize his public reputation by making false accusations he can’t support. So I foresee very tough times ahead for the bolichicos.