The current image of the Bubalis estate, with its grasslands swaying in the wind amidst an almost absolute solitude, contrasts sharply with the vibrant and festive splendor that reigned there until April 9, 2024, when its owner, Samark José López Bello, was arrested on the property of the island of Guara, Monagas state, for his alleged involvement in the Pdvsa-Crypto case.
Less than a year has passed since that arrest. Where the sound of live music used to echo during parties, silence prevails now. In a guard shack, once used as a gun depot for the protection of the estate, only three stern officials gaze across the clearing. On the land that once hosted buffalo and cattle, where corn and black beans flourished, only wild brush now remains. In the buildings where the new political and business elite of Venezuela once gathered, sentinels now stand watch. And where there was once extravagance, dust now rises.
López Bello, commonly regarded as a henchman of former Venezuelan Vice President Tarek El Aissami – to the point that both fell victim to the Pdvsa-Crypto raids and appeared together in a 2017 narcotics trafficking indictment in a federal court in New York – built a wall of productivity and opulence around himself at a time when external walls were rising against him due to legal processes and international sanctions.
López had benefited from the government food program, Local Supply and Production Committees (CLAP). Through his company Postar Intertade Limited, registered in Barbados, he imported tons of food for this program, which quickly became a means for favors and corruption. In the midst of his business ascent, he became the shadow owner of Bancamiga, one of the fastest-growing financial entities under chavismo. But it is well known how those who rise very high and dare to tousle the beards of the gods end up.
In a bid to reinvest his fortune or to isolate himself from the world closing in on him, López Bello spread the nearly 50,000 hectares (or around 500 square kilometers, according to consulted sources) of Agropecuaria Bubalis with part of that windfall he had harvested as the preferred supplier of the chavista state, transforming it into his personal Xanadu – referencing the imagined capital by Coleridge for Kublai Khan, which also named the palace in Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane.
Samark López established Bubalis near the Delta Amacuro border, the state where he grew up and holds childhood and youth memories. In this region, he also wielded the influence of a benefactor until he fell from grace in front of the regime that had long favored him.
At Bubalis, Samark López found solace. Yet, it wasn’t an invulnerable place, regardless of his wishes or beliefs.
The Island of Treasure
While it is part of the Uracoa municipality in Monagas state, Guara island is almost a suburb of Tucupita. To reach it from the capital of Delta Amacuro, one simply crosses the Mánamo creek. This vast river island has traditionally served as an agricultural pantry for the population of the Orinoco Delta, as well as a breeding ground for local investments.
As one travels the road towards Uracoa, which bisects the lands of Bubalis, a resident of Tucupita who accompanies the reporter and knows the estate’s history intimately explains that its expansion was a process of conquering nearby terrains. In summary: how much does your estate cost, what are your conditions for selling it, and above all, how long before you can hand it over.
Bubalis was another outcome of López Bello’s unstoppable business expansion, which exploded due to his closeness with El Aissami, gaining him the status of a reliable supplier of storage, food, and various goods, as well as engineering services and supplies for the electric and oil industries within the chavista regime.
By reviewing leaked documents from Oryx Resources, one of López Bello’s oil companies, it is also possible to reconstruct the asset history of Agropecuaria Bubalis, the legal entity that supported the business developed on the riverfront property.
Oryx Resources managed maintenance and subsurface work in the Carito-Pirital oil field, along with other maintenance activities at the Muscar Operational Complex in Monagas state. Its primary focus was on well testing services, evaluating the productivity potential of oil wells. It was directed by Armando Salazar, partner of another group oil company, Profit Corporation, and Carlos Gago.
Filtered Oryx documents reveal that in 2019 Agropecuaria Bubalis relocated from its original address in 2003, in Villa Granada, an upscale neighborhood of Puerto Ordaz, Bolívar state, where López Bello founded contractor companies for basic industries to parcels 19 and 41 of Sarabia in Uracoa municipality, southwest of Guara.
The documentation also sheds light on how Samark López Bello supported his companies’ activities with cross-payments among them. For Agropecuaria Bubalis, especially in 2022, numerous payments made by Oryx, as well as other companies in the conglomerate such as Fénix Resource, Administradora L-J2015 CA, and Profit Corporation, are documented. The transaction concepts ranged from event organization to buffalo transportation, along with oil management and engineering planning, payroll, and credit payments.
Renowned for his effectiveness and diligence, Samark López did not hesitate when it came to controlling Guara Island, envisioning it as his Fantasy Island. To achieve this, he undertook a blitzkrieg of acquisition and takeover.
“The first thing we heard was that they were a cartel. And although they turned out not to be, they acted cartel-like, buying up everything. They bought on both sides [of the road]. They also started buying up the little farms around. The only ones who didn’t sell were those from La Unión farm, which has a fridge in Puerto Ordaz,” shared a man, who requested anonymity, a common request during the reporting.
For this story, Armando.info spoke with seven people from the area. None authorized their identity to be made public, and four explicitly requested not to quote their words verbatim. There is fear. And the man now walking with the reporter along Agropecuaria Bubalis’s boundaries explains: even though Samark López is imprisoned, the risks haven’t lessened, and no one is clear on who manages the estate now.
A tour of the island reveals a landscape of great beauty, which was once covered with livestock. But foreboding signs are also found. A few meters from the estate’s entrance is a white-painted house, featuring two air conditioning units and a DirecTV antenna. Directly across, there’s a Stop sign. “It’s a National Guard checkpoint,” he explains. Outside, three uniformed officials watch the passerby. They greet with only the slightest nod of their heads, their expressions neutral beneath their sun-worn hats. This checkpoint did not exist until Samark López expanded his domain; he had it built. Now the post guards the remnants of his downfall.
Within the estate, houses painted in blue and white, one and two stories tall, accommodate sentinels who show no insignia. Are they from the Military Counterintelligence Directorate? From the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service? From the Guard? From the Army? “There are all kinds,” the man replies. The tour leaves some clues: entering a path between plots, a man appears from a house where windows are used to support monitors and cameras. He watches intently. And only once the roadway is left, even though it is public, does he shift his gaze.
“They [Samark López and his entourage] had National Guard and Army officials and civilians. The civilians were important because they knew the area,” he explains.
With the estate’s growth, El Flaco, as López Bello was known internally – Sierra Lima being the name he is identified by in the New York judicial case – aimed to play the role of a benefactor neighbor from there.
For instance, he planned to erect a five-kilometer electrical line for the Bajo Grande sector in Monagas, financed by himself; to pave the road between Tucupita and Uracoa; and to improve the electricity service in the surrounding sectors of El Paraíso, Sarabia, and Agua Dulce, adjacent to Agropecuaria Bubalis. And with him also came employment: the estate provided jobs for between 400 and 800 people, operating two transportation routes.
The new neighbor endeavored to be unobtrusive. And, in truth, the residents of Tucupita and Uracoa, afflicted by chronic poverty exacerbated by the humanitarian crisis, felt a breath of relief with his arrival. Workers were paid in dollars.
The extensive land initially housed over 1,500 buffalo and cattle, according to company documents. However, sources connected to the estate estimate that at its peak, there were 5,000 buffalo and over 10,000 cattle.
“But on the estate, they wouldn’t let you take photos at all. Only they could take photos. It was impressive. The machines, the buffalo, everything. You thought you were on a Texas ranch. They sold all types of animals, buffalo, cattle, pigs…of the highest quality,” recalls a person who was occasionally hired for event logistics at the estate.
The typical image during weekend mornings was of Samark López, a die-hard music lover, making calls to find out which musical artist was available that day, especially if they were singers of joropo music. Jorge Guerrero? Reynaldo Armas? Armando Martínez? Vitico Castillo? It didn’t matter who it was. If they were available, price didn’t matter either. What mattered was the fun, which seemed endless at that moment.
The estate had three main functions, according to its updated commercial document in 2020. The first was livestock farming, including fattening, slaughtering, selling, buying, exchanging, and pawning cattle; the second was agriculture, involving planting, harvesting, cultivating, selling, buying, and pawning agricultural products. And the third was wholesale and retail marketing of agricultural and livestock products.
When fuel restrictions were in place, López enjoyed an open line with Pdvsa for gasoline supply through Profit Corporation, one of his oil sector companies. Thus, he maintained operations at the estate.
For instance, during the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic, between 2019 and 2022, according to documents accessed by Armando.info for this story, Pedro Pacheco, representing Profit, and Víctor Brito, on behalf of Agropecuaria Bubalis, directly requested extraordinary quotas of 30,000 liters of diesel and 4,800 liters of 95-octane gasoline monthly from Elías Rangel Macho Hernández, regional director of the Orinoco Oil Belt, and to Mariño José Lugo Aguilar, general director of the Internal Market of the Belt. At that time, the justification for the request had two bases: the mobilization of 1,500 animals and the construction of the National Guard module.
The request also alleged the adaptation of 950 additional hectares “for planting 1,000 hectares of corn, 100 hectares of black beans, and 400 hectares of grass for agricultural and livestock activities related to the buffaloes.”
Small Town, Big Hell
López’s generosity often crossed the creek from Guara and radiated out to neighboring Tucupita. Because if Bubalis became Samark López’s Tara estate, Tucupita was always his Rosebud.
He grew up in that remote capital of Delta Amacuro before leaving to pursue university studies in Caracas first and then in Mérida, where he met Tarek El Aissami, then a student leader at the University of the Andes (ULA).
In terms of business, especially as these grew, López only trusted the people from Tucupita. That is, from his hometown. From his childhood and adolescence.
His intricate business dealings and life story converge at a point of origin: a house located on Arismendi Avenue, less than a block from Mánamo promenade, the long boulevard along the Orinoco that serves as a social meeting point in Tucupita. There, where Warao families, the local indigenous ethnicity, gather indistinctly to fish or to watch over a recently deceased baby, lies the Sagrada Familia school. It was Samark López’s school.
One of the consulted sources, who knew López during his childhood, points out a paradox: “All the people who work for him were better off than him and ended up working for Samark.” Tucupita still remembers Professor Inocente López and teacher Gumercinda Leoncia Bello, his parents. His mother was the more present figure in those early years, while the distant but respected paternal figure was supported emotionally by his uncle Marcos Bello, who was famous in town for the nickname Marquitos and a provincial pharmacy he operated. Just a few meters from the bar stands Samark López’s childhood home.
Among Samark López’s childhood friends in Tucupita were the brothers Armando and Amaury Salazar Gibory, sons of Armando Salazar, governor of Delta Amacuro from 1994 to 1995 for the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS). Both were López’s partners in Profit Corporation, C.A., an engineering firm headquartered in Caracas with an office in Tucupita.
In the case of Agropecuaria Bubalis, López’s partners were José Esteban Chacín Bello and Marcos Rafael Cabello Bello, cousins; and Gumercinda Leoncia Bello, his mother. Outside the company incorporation documents, the legal representative was Victor Brito, a childhood friend. Channeling social assistance and appearing at public events was Arcadio Brito, brother of Victor. “Arcadio is not the strong link. In fact, he gets around town easily. The real strong player [in López’s business] is his brother, Victor,” one of the sources specifies.
A third brother, Gustavo Brito, is described as a close operator to Diosdado Cabello, hailing from Monagas and currently the Minister of Interior and Justice and the eternal number 2 of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV). Another source notes that this third brother is part of the production team creating messages and content for Cabello, like those transmitted on the program “Con el mazo dando.”
The circle is completed by Rómulo Rangel, known in Tucupita by the nickname Minino, who, although he wasn’t a partner of the estate, served as chief veterinarian and general manager of it, at López’s request.
Nostalgically, Tucupita recounts the pomp of the tycoon’s arrivals. These were events that broke the town’s monotony. “When you saw the caravan coming from the airport with trucks full of Sebin [referring to the Bolivarian Intelligence Service, the regime’s political police], you knew Samark had arrived,” recalls one witness. From there he could cross by boat or fly in a helicopter to the estate. Sometimes he did the latter, but not from Tucupita; it was from the Manuel Carlos Piar airport in Puerto Ordaz. It all depended on his purposes and moods.
Geographically close to Bubalis and emotionally significant to López, Tucupita was the community most benefited by his bouts of corporate responsibility, disciplined through a couple of foundations. Samark López renovated Plaza Bolívar, hosted collegiate gaita festivals with prizes of up to $1,000, rehabilitated the Isaías Látigo Chávez stadium, restored the roof of the Cathedral of the Divine Shepherdess, and provided financial aid for the city’s sports team, Búffalos de Tucupita. But even the minutiae of the neighborhood received his attention. A fractured hip suffered by an elderly woman? Samark López covered the bills. A cancer diagnosis for a low-income individual? Samark López provided assistance. An emergency operation for a relative of an acquaintance? No problem: Samark López was ready to rescue.
For these purposes, he had two channels: one, with an office in Tucupita, was Profit Corporation, C.A., also registered in Barbados and mentioned by OFAC (the Office of Foreign Assets Control under the Department of the Treasury) as a sanctioned entity. The other was Fundajanoko, an organization “created by people from Delta Amacuro for people from Delta Amacuro, aiming to generate collective impact works to benefit Delta Amacuro state,” as detailed on its X account, being the most prominent facet of his charitable efforts, always represented by third parties, his childhood friends, whom he made partners and facades, just like he did with his businesses since 2017.
Many testimonies indicate that Bubalis was productive. However, consensus doesn’t extend to affirming it was profitable. In any case, it was a distraction that López Bello allowed himself at a time when he had an excess of time and liquidity, following international sanctions against him. Some explain it was primarily a long-term investment for Samark López. The truth is he grew fond of it and spent time there.
Until 2023, Agropecuaria Bubalis was the main promoter of livestock exhibition events on the Tucupita boardwalk. Through these events, the herd of buffalo was paraded, while anyone who wished could sample the cheeses produced there. Everything was abundant.
But not everyone was swept away by the joy overflowing from that cornucopia. The governor of Delta Amacuro since 2008, Lizeta Hernández, began to see López with suspicion and subtly attacked him.
“She attacked him through the media. Lizeta would say where that money for investments like the cathedral renovation was coming from. She hit the core of the matter: the money Samark invested,” specifies a consulted source.
But doubt regarding the funds for social works was not the only point for the governor’s complaints. Another person from within Agropecuaria Bubalis recalls speaking with Armando.info: “He [López] would arrive at the airport and Lizeta would say that it wasn’t anyone’s parking lot.”
But in that 2023, something heavier unsettled López: his friend and ally, Tareck El Aissami, resigned the position of Minister of Oil on March 21 due to the corruption case in the Pdvsa-Crypto scheme. For a year, nothing was heard from him until April 10, 2024, when chavismo released the image of the former governor of Aragua in handcuffs and detained. On that same day, Samark López was also presented handcuffed and in prison uniform. At least two sources consulted specify that López was detained at Agropecuaria Bubalis and that he was kept isolated from his family and lawyers until at least January of last year.
One consulted source specifies that the current governor of Delta Amacuro was not the most powerful rival López amassed during his years of prosperity. According to the source, the current attorney general of the regime, Tarek William Saab, harbored an old grudge against López since, as governor of Anzoátegui state (2004-12), he felt sidelined by López Bello, then a rising contractor for Pdvsa who preferred to work directly with the local authorities of the municipalities through which his companies laid pipelines. If you believe the narrative, Saab finally had the opportunity to settle the score with López in 2024.
Shortly after, Samark López Bello faced another setback: in late 2024, a Miami court ruled that the assets frozen in the United States belonging to the businessman could be used to indemnify Venezuelan lawyer Carlos Marrón for $153 million, who was tortured in Venezuela for two years.
His paradise on Guara Island was plundered. According to testimonies from the residents of Tucupita and Uracoa, the buffalo that once populated the estate were removed in trucks escorted by the National Guard and the Army, taking them to unknown destinations.
This devastation, even amidst the opacity with which the regime has handled the Agropecuaria Bubalis case, highlights the empty atmosphere now prevailing in the estate, reflecting the pendulum fate of Samark López: from benefactor of the sweetness afforded by his closeness to power to being victimized by chavista justice.
*This note was edited on March 3, 2025, to clarify information about the Brito brothers, one of whom is a childhood friend of Samark López Bello.
