I must mention, right? The newspaper whose front page is dominated today by “football leaks” with stories about the use -by professional footballers- of offshore companies in tax havens, investigated by the Spanish prosecution for “crimes against the public treasury,” also publishes today an “interview,” conducted by an “investigative journalist,” about Alejandro Betancourt, the boss of Derwick Associates, the Venezuelan shell company that basically stole over 1 billion dollars in overpriced contracts with the Venezuelan state. One has to ask the editorial team of El Mundo -if it even exists-: it’s a cause for denounce that footballers use offshore companies to evade taxes in Spain, but it’s not a problem that corrupt Venezuelans launder stolen money in Spain?
The absence of fact-checking in El Mundo (verifying that what is published, or heard from the interviewee, can be independently substantiated) is absolute. The interviewer presents Betancourt to his readers as a spotless man: an impeccable businessman who made his fortune through public contracts in Venezuela and on whom there is no question whatsoever. The issue, for the credibility of El Mundo and the interviewer, is the abundance of evidence that shows, without a doubt, that Alejandro Betancourt is everything but a successful businessman. Stealing public money does not equate to business success. And laundering ill-gotten public money -no matter how it is presented as investment- is a crime punishable in most countries around the world, including Spain.
Publishing false data and dates undermines journalism. And there is quite a bit of that in the “interview” with Betancourt. Derwick Associates was not founded on the date attributed to it by El Mundo, nor did Betancourt work for PDVSA, and the claim that any court in the US has “ruled in his favor” is even less accurate.
In the various civil lawsuits filed against Derwick and Betancourt in the US, what has been settled -up until now- is the jurisdiction of such courts to address these cases. The facts, such as determining whether the contracts in Venezuela were the result of bribery and illicit enrichment (as is the case), have not yet been judged in lawsuits filed by individuals, as Betancourt would like readers of El Mundo to believe, but are criminally investigated by federal agencies and prosecutors in the US. A simple Google search is enough to inquire into the matter (though maybe there aren’t any English speakers in the El Mundo newsroom). Neither the “investigative journalist,” nor his editors at El Mundo, bothered to check Mr. Betancourt’s past. And if they did, they chose to exclude any evidence of illegal activities from the “interview.”
They have omitted from his experience in “black gold,” the more than 250 million dollars he lost in Colombia, through his “investment” in Pacific Energy (another money laundering case). The interviewer also fails to account for the reasons why Betancourt has refused to be deposed in person in the US, could it be fear of being arrested for exactly the same criminal causes against the “mogul” Roberto Rincón? The €50 million for 20% of Hawkers is just another attempt to legitimize his image, to which the journalism of El Mundo has just significantly contributed. But it should come as no surprise, considering that the President of the Government of Spain uses his power to give preferential treatment to other boliburgueses and corrupt Venezuelans. The legitimacy of the chavista fortunes that have arrived in Spain is not a cause for concern or scrutiny for either the press or the government.