London 03/10/2012 | There was a time when Venezuelan criminals caught red-handed resorted to a rather flimsy form of intimidation: paid ads in government-friendly media. I fondly recall how two such petty crooks from a ‘North American Opinion Research’ pollster, Julio Makarem and Ricardo Valbuena, chose to handle the exposure of their questionable pasts by urging Hugo Chavez and his regime to investigate me and other bloggers who had contributed to exposing their shady dealings. Sadly for Makarem and Valbuena, no investigation ever took place, leaving their reputations tarnished permanently.
However, times have changed the strategies employed by both old and new criminals in Venezuela. Perhaps readers will remember how impersonators, acting on behalf of Majed Khalil Majzoub, began sending me legal threats demanding that I remove valid information on the corrupt schemes in which Khalil Majzoub was involved. Since my reaction wasn’t what Khalil Majzoub had hoped for, his online reputation management team contacted Blogger.com, claiming that my posts revealing their illegal activities had violated copyrights. Eventually, Blogger realized the validity of my counterarguments—after all, it’s doubtful that Google aims to shield criminals’ reputations—and restored the posts in question (see here, and here).
Just before Blogger ruled in my favor, my hosting company sent me the following message:
Please be aware that your website, vcrisis.com, is currently under a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack.
Due to this attack affecting the entire shared server, we have implemented a block on the firewall restricting access solely to vcrisis.com. Your email and other services should still be operational.
We are monitoring the DDoS attack and will remove the firewall block once it stops.
If you have any information regarding the source of the attack, please inform us.
This was the first time since I began blogging at vcrisis.com in October 2002 that such an attack occurred. I had faced numerous threats, but my site had never experienced a DDoS attack before. The attack lasted roughly a week. In my own investigations, I discovered that millions of public funds stolen from Venezuela could fund hackers’ services, including botnets for large-scale DDoS attacks.
While my situation with Majed Khalil Majzoub unfolded, similar attempts transpired elsewhere. I noted that those trying to cleanse Khalil Majzoub’s online reputation had registered hundreds of sites, effectively pushing negative results down Google rankings, making articles about their misconduct hard to find. This is perfectly legal and many utilize it. Thanks to the open-source nature of published information, the legal threats I faced were ineffective. However, while reading other sites, I found that several Boliburgueses—referring to the incredibly corrupt chavista ‘businessmen’ class who’ve amassed immense wealth in recent years—were also engaging in similar tactics. David Osio and Moris Beracha, both tied to Pancho Illaramendi’s $550 million fraud linked to PDVSA’s worker funds, have registered numerous websites aimed at erasing connections to articles that expose them as fraudsters. In the comment section of the linked article, FTI Consulting is noted as the firm ‘cleaning’ these thugs’ images online.
Alejandro Betancourt Lopez
Enter Leopoldo Alejandro Betancourt Lopez, aka Alejandro Betancourt Lopez. This individual is purported to be the director of a company called Derwick Associates. Venezuelan journalist Cesar Batiz conducted a thorough investigation into Betancourt and Derwick Associates, exposing overcharging that amounted to hundreds of millions of dollars for power plants sold to various public institutions aimed at resolving electrical blackouts. Batiz provided names of directors, registered addresses—in Panama, Barbados, the USA, Spain, and Venezuela—as well as suspicious connections. More importantly, he identified the new class of criminals who are plundering Venezuelan public coffers, dubbed Boliburgueses 2.0 or Bolichicos. Most are under 30 yet have amassed fortunes in the billions over the last 3 or 4 years. For example, Betancourt Lopez now owns a €24 million, 1,600-hectare estate in Spain, where he held a lavish wedding with matadors and everything (this seems to be a common theme among Venezuelan crooks who marry into Spanish high society to launder their ill-gotten wealth…)
According to Batiz, despite lacking a solid track record, Derwick Associates secured a total of 12 public contracts in just 14 months. The first contract with Bariven (a PDVSA subsidiary) took place in 2009, only 12 days after Hugo Chavez declared a national emergency due to power outages. That contract netted Derwick Associates a cool $209 million. More contracts followed due to the ’emergency.’ According to another site, wikianticorrupcion.org, Derwick Associates ended up pocketing $1.2 billion from a total of $3 billion in contracts. Batiz listed projects like Picure, La Raisa I, Guarenas I, Dual Tacoa, Guarenas II, La Raisa II, CVG-Sidor, Las Morochas, Furrial, Morichal, Barinas, and Bare as contracts awarded to Derwick. Unsurprisingly, all these power generation projects remain incomplete, even though the money is safely stashed away in Gazprom Bank in Lebanon, JP Morgan, and Julius Baer. Betancourt Lopez’s associates in crime are identified as: Pedro Trebbau Lopez, Iker Candina, Gonzalo X. Guzman Lopez, Edgar Romero Lazo, Silvia Clarke, and Luis A. Davis.
As a young entrepreneur, Betancourt Lopez is acutely aware of reputation management techniques. However, it surprises me that, unlike others, he has actually filed legal action concerning the investigations into his illegal activities published so far. Cesar Batiz seems to be the trailblazing investigator in this saga, but Betancourt Lopez and his associates at Derwick have instituted legal proceedings against Oscar Garcia Mendoza, owner of Venezuela’s most reputable bank, Banco Venezolano de Credito (BVC), for allegedly financing the site wikianticorrupcion.org, and, get this, “for the intentional, unlawful and malicious purpose of attempting to harm and destroy [Derwick Associates’] personal, professional, and business reputations.” What reputation might that be? Since when do crooks care about reputations in international circles? Perhaps only now that they’re frantically trying to erase their past.
The Bolichicos at Derwick are demanding $300 million in damages. I’ve also heard that Derwick Associates has been threatening fellow bloggers following the exposure of its misdeeds. The entire affair is, of course, laughable, as Betancourt Lopez and the activities of Derwick Associates can only withstand scrutiny in Hugo Chavez’s kangaroo courts. The moment independent prosecutors in the USA start investigating how Derwick Associates achieved its sudden wealth, numerous explanations will need to be provided. Money laundering and corruption are, after all, offenses in most jurisdictions, and when discussions about the allegations made by Batiz and wikianticorrupcion.org surface in court, it will be extremely interesting to hear what Betancourt and his associates have to say. This actually reminds me of another instance of arrogant Venezuelan thugs (the Smartmatic boys) boasting about their willingness to undergo a CFIUS probe, only to realize that it wasn’t in their best interest, leading them to flee.
Derwick Associates exemplifies a myriad of criminal enterprises that have thrived under Hugo Chavez’s rampant and reckless mismanagement. From Ricardo Fernandez Barrueco to Wilmer Ruperti, the Smartmatic boys, the Khalil brothers, to ‘bankers’ David Osio and Moris Beracha, to drug dealer Walid Makled—who had many of Venezuela’s top generals and chavista politicans on his payroll—all share common traits: an amoral and predatory nature that has cost Venezuela billions over the past 14 years.