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Alejandro Betancourt (also known as Leopoldo Alejandro Betancourt López, Leopoldo Betancourt, Alejandro Betancourt López) is a chavista prodigy. A ‘global pioneer and entrepreneur’ seems to be preparing for his move to Spain, considering the challenging times in his homeland, Venezuela. Given his “stature” as a “businessman, philanthropist, innovator, and financial wizard,” Mr. Betancourt’s PR team recently launched a new website: AlejandroBetancourt.Es (note the TLD for Spain) to serve as his business card to the world. The “aristocratization” process of Betancourt (in honor of the geographic context, I’ll define it as “Slimification” or the process by which Latin American entrepreneurs with dubious pasts/credentials and even more questionable wealth become “respectable”) deserves scrutiny. Let’s skip the bragging article his PR team posted on Wikipedia and focus on his own biography page, which is a great place to appreciate the ‘achievements and history’ of a man of his ‘stature.’
The page begins with verifiable fraudulent claims and quickly moves to exaggerations that end with embellishments and more fraud:
With a double major in Economics and Business Administration from Suffolk University in Massachusetts (Boston, USA), Alejandro Betancourt is an example of a select group of Venezuelan entrepreneurs…
A “degree” is the Spanish word for a “title.” It seems that the Alejandro Betancourt from Derwick is so insecure and desperate for respectability that even his academic credentials are overstated to the point of fraud. We called the Suffolk University Registrar’s Office at (617) 573-8430, where we confirmed that Betancourt did not, in fact, obtain a “double major in Economics and Business Administration.” No, this ‘notable businessman’ graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Economics on May 21, 2006. That’s a single major, not two degrees or even two specializations. Betancourt’s alma mater ranks number 60 among regional universities in the northern U.S. In other words, it’s not even second-tier; it’s a third-tier institution known for being easy to “get into” for international students who couldn’t gain admission to any other schools but wanted to be in Boston, where, for Venezuelans, Boston is party time.
But what to make of his claim to be “an example of Venezuelan entrepreneurs”? Betancourt did business with the Venezuelan state as an Italian citizen, representing a Panamanian company. Is that the “example” he refers to?
Next:
He served as the Director of Trade for Latin America at the UK Delegation of the northern ICC-OEOC (http://www.iccoeoc.com/index1.asp), specializing in the energy sector and the trading of oil and its derivatives, with a presence in the USA, Europe, the Middle East, South America, and Africa.
When we contacted the phone number listed on his website, a man answered saying he had never heard of Alejandro Betancourt and that no one by that name had worked there. This man also informed us that this company, icc-oeoc, no longer exists. A superficial glance at the website makes it look like a night flight, used by someone in a shady oil business. Perhaps this is the type of experience Betancourt gained before launching Derwick Associates. And the role couldn’t be more false: “business director for LatAm at the UK delegation of American ICC-OEOC.” Like, what?
And the embellishment continues:
Betancourt has been part of the management teams of Guruceaga Group, a company focused on international commodity trading where he was the director; and BGB Energy, the Venezuelan subsidiary of the international corporation Kawasaki Heavy Industries (http://www.khi.co.jp/english/). As the chief executive of BGB Energy, he participated in Venezuela’s Center-West Interconnection Project (ICO), which took place in 2006.
The name of this company matches that of a maternal relative of Betancourt. It’s another major exaggeration, if not fraud. He claims he was the “director” of “Grupo Guruceaga.” There’s no website or public information available online about “Grupo Guruceaga,” probably just a jewelry stand at some flea market. The timeframe of Betancourt’s “chief executive of BGB Energy” is interesting because he was actually at Suffolk University in 2006. How, then, could he have been the “chief executive” representing Kawasaki Heavy Industries? Moreover, “BGB Energy” is exactly what? A company registered in Panama on October 18, 2006, with Betancourt, Luis Enrique Giminez, and Enrique Giminez Chumaciero as directors.
And it keeps going:
After the success of BGB Energy in the ICO Project and with almost a decade of experience in the sector, Alejandro Betancourt decided to found, in 2007, Derwick Associates…
What was the “success” of BGB Energy? What “success” was that? The company is so successful it’s no longer registered as a business; it was suspended from the contractor registry in Venezuela. Its “office” is a ground-floor apartment in Prados del Este, a middle-class neighborhood in Caracas.
The first rule of public relations is that when you find yourself in a hole, you need to stop digging. The “bolichicos” of Derwick Associates tend to exemplify precisely what not to do in all cases of crisis management in public relations. It would take a ten-year-old with access to Google and basic arithmetic skills to make Swiss cheese out of Betancourt’s “resume,” especially with this claim of having “almost a decade of experience,” meaning a career of “almost a decade.” In 1997, at the beginning of that “decade,” Betancourt was 17 years old (date of birth: February 2, 1980). Furthermore, the Venezuelan social security contribution database shows that Betancourt’s first contributions were indeed made in 2007 (only nine weeks of recorded salaries, see photo).
If Alejandro Betancourt graduated in 2006, where did this decade of experience in the energy sector come from? Did he work for a decade without reporting any income? Such BS could only be taken at face value by Betancourt’s enablers, i.e., willing bankers, willing lawyers, and willing lobbyists, who pretend to believe in his ongoing falsehoods so they can justify billing this thief for defending his ‘reputation’ as a ‘world-class entrepreneur’ instead of the world-class bottom feeder who defrauded Venezuela out of billions.
But let the discrediting continue:
His commitment to innovation and improving electric power production processes in Venezuela has led Derwick Associates to quickly position itself to undertake large-scale projects both within and outside Venezuelan borders. In fact, since 2010, Derwick has built 11 simple-cycle thermal power plants that have added 1,386 MW to Venezuela’s electrical system and created over 12,000 jobs, benefiting nearly 700,000 families, making it one of the most important private companies in Venezuela’s electric sector.
The absurdly laughable claim of creating 12,000 jobs can only be surpassed by not mentioning that they defrauded the Venezuelan government out of nearly $3 billion due to overcharging. Derwick and Betancourt did not add value to any of the projects they worked on; they simply got their friends to give them contracts, then subcontracted and sat back collecting like toll booth operators. Others did all the work and also got rich: Betancourt’s partners, Jeff and Cara Canon, from ProEnergy Services.
Interestingly, Betancourt deliberately omitted certain aspects of his ‘career’ from his biography page. For some reason, there’s no news about his deals with the Venezuelan Corporation of Guayana (CVG) and his involvement in what some have described as a $500 million scam. There’s also no mention of Betancourt’s ‘professional relationship’ with Gazprom and Gazprombank (as he claimed in a dubious lawsuit against the Venezuelan Banking Corporation in Miami) as “external consultants for their operations in the Andean region.” There’s no evidence anywhere that Gazprom or Gazprombank hired Betancourt in any capacity.
Despite all the lies, Betancourt seems hellbent on continuing his slimming process (also understood as the tendency of certain “entrepreneurs” from Latin America to exploit childhood friends and nepotistic networks as their only redeeming trait). A Spanish financial magazine, with a similarly false record, recently awarded Betancourt a prize for “contributions to the Spain brand.” Moreover, Betancourt has managed to bribe or co-opt Venezuela’s most prestigious engineering university (Simón Bolívar University) to launch some sort of training program (boligarcs seem to have a weakness for ‘university programs’). Betancourt is also set to launch a “turbine technology center,” where Derwick Associates, a company that subcontracts everything to third parties, will service the poorly functioning power plants in Venezuela.
In time, Betancourt and his partners will likely be “accepted” by the nobility, upper bourgeoisie, and ruling classes of Spain, if they manage to escape the pending legal case in the U.S. and if Betancourt has enough money to buy his way to the top. His brand, Derwick Associates, appears to be losing value rapidly, although it’s fascinating to see, in real time, how Latin American bullies get involved in Slimification.