After weeks of intense work with a group of volunteer informants, infodio.com is excited to launch infodioLeaks, a secure platform accessible via the Tor Browser Bundle aimed at encouraging our readers to provide us with information and leaks about corruption. This platform will allow our readers to bypass censorship, and its launch could not have come at a better time: on January 16, 2014, the Maduro regime—through the state telecommunications company CANTV—and other Internet service providers in Venezuela, including Inter, a subsidiary of Telefónica Movistar, Supercable, and Digitel, have blocked access to INFODIO. This website and its content are unavailable in Venezuela unless accessed through a proxy, like those provided by Tor, or by using websites like deanonyme.org. The shutdown of infodio.com was an unexpected event. I have been exposing corruption in Venezuela since 2002, and this is the first time in history that a site associated with me has been banned in Venezuela. It shows that we are making such an impact that both chavistas and boligarcas wanted to prevent Venezuelans from reading what we publish here. We invite you to help us break down the wall of censorship by reposting or forwarding information you believe should be public while encouraging our readers to continue sending us information through infodioLeaks.
InfodioLeaks is currently in beta mode; we’re still fine-tuning it. However, if the leaks that have already arrived are any indication of what the future holds, I assure you, dear readers, that this site will become a nightmare not just for people from Derwick Associates but for the whole array of “businessmen” known as the boliburguesía. Leaks about “real estate developers” funding boutique hotels in exclusive Caribbean hideouts; clues about “financiers” gobbling up Venezuela’s largest newspapers and TV stations through third parties; we hear about former car salesmen who suddenly became “art collectors,” embezzlers who turned into “polo players,” and we learned about bankers who paid over a billion euros for a bank in Spain, even outbidding competitors by about 200 million euros. (By the way, how can one get over a billion euros and then take it out of a nation where people have to beg the government for 2000 euros to travel abroad?).
The document below is a prelude to the kind of deals that the Venezuelan state, through its completely corrupt officials (like the president of BARIVEN, Guillermo Arellano), made with the bolichicos from Derwick Associates: Leopoldo Alejandro Betancourt López, Francisco Convit Guruceaga, and Pedro Trebbau López. For months, Derwick Associates has been pumping stories into various media outlets worldwide about their commitment to Venezuela. This entire public relations effort began after scrutiny revealed that Derwick Associates was nothing more than a suitcase corporation, a fly by night, that obtained 12 no-bid contracts in 14 months to build power plants. The firm’s principals had no prior experience whatsoever in the energy sector, yet they were awarded all these contracts. César Batiz from Ultimas Noticias revealed overcharging and strange transactions between BARIVEN and Derwick Associates. We have received several documents through a leak that provides a glimpse into the relationship between Derwick Associates and the Venezuelan government. This is firm evidence that instead of hiring a well-known power plant contractor, the Venezuelan government established a relationship with a fictitious company in Panama. A foreign company. The Memorandum of Understanding from BARIVEN also reveals that Mr. Betancourt holds dual (or is it triple?) nationality. Mr. Leopoldo Alejandro Betancourt López, the Italian gentleman identified with passport no. F432811 in the MoU, represents Panamanian Derwick Associates in its agreement with BARIVEN. It is known that Italian tax authorities are ruthless when it comes to pursuing tax fraud. Now that Derwick Associates is moving to Spain (what happened to Venezuela being the center of their efforts?), European jurisdiction may become another avenue for confiscating the ill-gotten wealth of the Bolichicos.
The no-bid contracts obtained by this Panamanian entity and its Italian president (both with no background in construction or energy) were subsequently subcontracted to a company in Missouri, USA (ProEnergy Services), which provided the construction and equipment. It seems that Venezuela’s only role here was to transfer huge sums of money to the bank accounts of this Panamanian/Italian/American cabal in the USA. Betancourt recently explained the idea behind “creating Derwick Associates in Venezuela” in a statement from an interview, saying: “I love my country; it has given me everything I am, and it is only fair that I give back everything I have.”
What country would that be, Venezuela or Italy?
Due to the nature of the Tor browser, I cannot know where a leak originates unless the whistleblower identifies themselves. But given the highly confidential nature of this document, I might venture to guess: the offices of BARIVEN, the offices of PDVSA, or someone within Derwick Associates. Maybe a former employee? We hope to encourage individuals from any public entity that may have information about how the Venezuelan state has been scammed out of hundreds of millions of dollars to leak us information. Journalist Cesar Batiz, and later the editor of Ultimas Noticias, formally requested information on this scandal—which should have been acted upon according to existing laws—but BARIVEN, PDVSA, and Derwick Associates refused to comply. Instead, the Derwick folks managed to get the intelligence police -SEBIN- to harass and threaten Batiz and his family; his email was hacked, his home was raided, and a tracker was placed on his car. Additionally, well-connected Twitter users in Venezuela, with more than 350,000 followers, have made public calls for information about these contracts, yet no one anywhere has revealed anything about them. So far. Either way, this seems very damaging. I believe there is a chavista law that sets foreign entity participation percentages in certain sectors, with energy generation being one of them. Should we believe that Mr. Arellano ignored his own laws to favor Derwick Associates, a Panamanian company operating in New York owned by an Italian doing business with Venezuela? Where does Mr. Betancourt López pay his taxes, in Venezuela or Italy?
There’s more to come, stay tuned…