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The lawyer and businessman Raúl Gorrín, a fugitive from U.S. justice and sanctioned by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), has been a key figure in the corruption network deeply embedded in Venezuela’s political and financial power. A report by Transparency Venezuela reveals how Gorrín leveraged his closeness with high-ranking regime officials to amass a fortune through institutional looting, bribing judges, and transnational money laundering.
Gorrín was identified as one of the operators in the judicial network known as “Los Enanos”, exposed by former magistrate Luis Velásquez Alvaray. From this position, he began to cultivate relationships with individuals like Maikel Moreno —former president of the Supreme Court—, his brother-in-law and partner Gustavo Perdomo, and Mariano Díaz, a businessman who died in 2019 in a plane crash loaded with gold. Through this network, Gorrín positioned himself as a financier, front man, and guarantor of impunity for the chavista elite.
His role was crucial in the corruption schemes tied to the National Treasury Office. According to U.S. authorities, Gorrín paid over $1 billion in bribes to former treasurers Alejandro Andrade and Claudia Díaz Guillén. In exchange, he gained privileged access to currency exchange operations that generated him millions. Andrade, who has already been convicted in the U.S., facilitated the connections between Gorrín and Díaz Guillén, who is currently imprisoned along with her husband Adrián Velásquez.
But Gorrín’s reach extended beyond financial structures. In 2013, he purchased the news channel Globovisión and shortly thereafter aligned it with the official narrative. This transaction occurred amid direct pressure from Nicolás Maduro, as revealed by former intelligence chief Hugo “El Pollo” Carvajal. Since then, the channel ceased its critical stance and became a propaganda tool.
Additionally, former Attorney General Luisa Ortega Díaz pointed him out as a front man for Cilia Flores and her sons —Yoswal, Yosser, and Walter Gavidia Flores— all linked to money laundering and illicit enrichment networks. Simultaneously, his nephew, Erik Malpica Flores, former director of Finance at Pdvsa and also sanctioned by the U.S., operated as another link in the scheme.
The billion-dollar opaque currency operations of Pdvsa with Alejandro Betancourt and Raúl Gorrín
Gorrín established a network of at least 29 companies in Venezuela, the United States, Panama, and the Caribbean, used to conceal funds, acquire luxury goods, and move money through banks in Switzerland and the Dominican Republic. Among them are Rim Group Investments, Seguros La Vitalicia, and the Banco Peravia, which was intervened for money laundering.
Despite being on ICE’s most wanted list, Gorrín managed to archive a case in Spain thanks to a ruling issued by the Venezuelan judiciary, which is internationally questioned for its lack of independence. Meanwhile, his environment continues to operate with impunity. Currently, according to various sources, the “Los Enanos” gang operates from the Vice Presidency of the Republic, with Delcy Rodríguez as the political leader of what remains of this mafia network.