There is no rest for the wicked Rafael Ramírez. Beyond his foolish presidential aspirations that will never materialize, Ramírez is a hunted man. Add Portugal to the jurisdictions of the USA, Switzerland, Andorra, Spain, and Venezuela, where he remains a person of interest. Many of his closest and most trusted crime partners are in jail in some of those jurisdictions. The imminent danger for Ramírez is that his lieutenants have already turned against him. Abraham Shiera, Roberto Rincón and his son, Luis Carlos de León, Abraham Ortega, César Rincón Godoy, Rafael Reiter, Nervis Villalobos, Christian Maldonado, among others, have pleaded guilty, are about to do so, or will likely do so, in the prospect of years in prison. All those fingers are pointing at Ramírez. As Minister of Energy and CEO of PDVSA for over a decade, all the large-scale corruption rests at his door.
PDVSA hires Rafael Ramírez’s wife and mother-in-law.
PDVSA hires Rafael Ramírez’s wife and mother-in-law.
His two brothers have been named. His cousin, brother-in-law, wife, and mother-in-law, his closest companions and substitutes at PDVSA, his bankers, the corrupt oligarchs who dealt with him personally… There is no escape from the plundering of hundreds of billions that Ramírez facilitated during his tenure.
Take, for instance, Charles Henry de Beaumont. Involved in a money-laundering scheme exceeding $4 billion with PDVSA. Who initiated the deal? Nervís Villalobos. Who gave the green light? Rafael Ramírez.
Look at the investigation in Portugal highlighted by Luis Rosa: how did Roberto Rincón and Abraham Shiera siphon off around 3.5 billion euros from PDVSA? Through a structure established by the Banco Espirito Santo (BES), created by Ricardo Salgado, through which BES financed invoices presented by Rincón & co to BARIVEN (a subsidiary of PDVSA). Bribes were organized by Villalobos and paid through a BES subsidiary in Dubai (ES Bankers Dubai). Who approved that? Ramírez. It’s better to quote Luis Rosa directly:
In the same time frame when Ricardo Salgado was sending a special audit team from Lisbon to Dubai to tackle issues with the DFSA, Michel Ostertag and Paulo Murta allegedly agreed with Nervis Villalobos, Roberto Rincón, and Abraham Shiera on a new financing scheme from BES to Bariven for the payment of overdue invoices from the Shiera and Rincón Groups.
It is ironic that Bariven, a subsidiary of one of the largest oil companies in the world with assets over 100 billion euros, required financing from a small bank (on a global scale) like BES when it was working with the world’s top players.
Thus, the companies of Roberto Rincón and Abraham Shiera began receiving payments for invoices charged to Bariven through accounts opened in the SFE of BES Madeira, while the alleged bribes to Bariven and PDVSA employees continued to be paid through ES Bankers Dubai accounts. Later, these accounts were also transferred to the SFE of BES Madeira.
Rosa reports that prosecutors from Spain, Switzerland, and the US Department of Justice collaborated with their Portuguese counterparts to make sense of the corruption scheme established by Salgado’s BES and other players. Thanks to Rosa’s reports, new unknown names have emerged: Paulo Murta, Michel Joseph Ostertag, ICG Wealth Management (Dubai), Eagle Management (Fiji), Margarita Mendola Sanchez, Rafael Alfredo Cure Lopez, Arnoldo Cardenas Hernandez, Domingo Galán Macias, Angel Pereira, Rita González Bello, and Jorge Hernández González.
Rosa drops another bomb: Rafael Reiter – Ramírez’s right-hand man and head of security – turns out to be at the helm of none other than Samark López Bello in a shell company called Líder Seguro.
The news that US, Spanish, and Portuguese prosecutors are working together to unravel the largest corruption scandal of this century is quite extraordinary. It corroborates leaks and information sent to this site. Swiss prosecutors have also been compelled, perhaps reluctantly, to cooperate with US justice due to the extensive PDVSA corruption that has occurred through Swiss banks and energy trading companies.
Ramírez, with his pathetic holier-than-thou attitude pretending to be the ultimate defender of Hugo Chávez‘s legacy, seems to have forgotten that Hugo Chávez himself fired his close associate Nervis Villalobos for his involvement in the corruption of the La Vueltosa project. Instead of respecting Chávez’s decision regarding Villalobos, Ramírez smuggled him back in through the backdoor so that his rampant campaign of corruption and extortion could continue uninterrupted.
Continuing with the immoral saga of Venezuela, it is not merely a coincidence that the Miami branch of Espirito Santo (Brickell Bank) had been compromised by Joseph Benhamou, the thug behind Charles Henry de Beaumont and Compagnie Bancaire Helvetique. Let the money laundering continue…