Earlier this year, I was contacted by a chavista source with an intriguing story. I imagine the initiation of this exchange was prompted by my ongoing investigation into the corruption surrounding Derwick Associates, which I’ve been working on since 2012. The identity of the source isn’t as important as their position within the trust network of Luis Motta Dominguez.
Motta Dominguez, associated with Tareck el Aissami, holds the dubious distinction of being implicated as part of the Cartel de los Soles, whose leader is reportedly Diosdado Cabello.
Alejandro Betancourt, Pedro Trebbau, Francisco Convit, and other criminals from Derwick Associates have based their defense regarding the awarding of twelve contracts by public institutions in Venezuela since 2009 on a lie: they repeatedly claim that all contracts were obtained fairly through open public procurement processes.
Without providing any evidence, the bolichicos of Derwick claim that the world should believe they are the only ones who haven’t paid bribes to secure contracts from the chavista regime. Journalists who have requested information from Derwick about how they obtained their contracts have received the same response. Some of us have faced threats and assaults. The only way to prove that the contracts were awarded as Derwick claims is by publishing said contracts. This is where Luis Motta Dominguez comes into play.
Motta Dominguez was appointed President of CORPOELEC in August 2015. He had previously served in Aragua as a trusted associate of el Aissami. Given that CORPOELEC was one of the first institutions to hire the ‘services’ of Derwick Associates during the management of the now fugitive from U.S. justice, Javier Alvarado Ochoa, it is undeniable that CORPOELEC maintains detailed records of these contracts.
A contact close to Motta Dominguez sent me a wealth of information regarding these contracts. This information, which shows that the bolichicos benefited from “Direct Contracting” (meaning favoritism), hasn’t been mentioned in Venezuelan media at all.
The contracts reveal the corrupt dealings between Javier Alvarado Ochoa, Alejandro Betancourt, and Pedro Trebbau. Derwick Associates is identified in the contracts sometimes as a company from Barbados, sometimes from Panama, and other times as Venezuelan. Betancourt is Italian one day and Venezuelan another. Sometimes Alvarado signs, and other times it’s Luis Carlos de León (arrested in Spain along with Nervis Villalobos). A professor from Simón Bolivar University, Alberto Joanes Urdaneta, also appears as a signer. Pedro Jose Onore, supposedly the Director of Engineering at CORPOELEC, is also listed.
This information proves the corruption in Derwick Associates’ contracting. There was no bidding process; instead, rampant nepotism prevailed. The Derwick bolichicos had neither the capacity nor experience at the time the contracts were awarded to carry out the works for which they were hired. It is already public knowledge that they subcontracted all work to an American company, Pro Energy Services, through which they also leaked a massive amount of information revealing overpricing by hundreds of millions of dollars that Derwick applied to all equipment and services purchased by Venezuelan entities.
Little is known about the internal conflicts within chavismo. What is evident is that a certain sector within chavismo seems interested in making the issue of Derwick Associates’ corruption public. There are no known links between the bolichicos and Tareck el Aissami. As for bribing Diosdado Cabello, it is inconceivable to expect any loyalty from the cartel leader, who has already publicly expressed the supposed need to investigate the bolichicos.