The other day we found out -thanks to Roberta- that representatives from the umbrella group opposing chavismo in Venezuela had been asking the U.S. State Department to NOT impose sanctions on those responsible for atrocious human rights violations. Roberta’s misstep was, in my opinion and contrary to conventional wisdom, a calculated move. It was a clear message from the State Department aimed at exposing Venezuelan politicians who love to pretend something in public and then cozy up to completely corrupt chavismo accomplices. The MUD has a representative in Washington: Leopoldo Martínez. Martínez’s NGO, the grandiose “Center for Democracy and Development in the Americas” (CDDA), serves as the perfect front.
Since some folks on Twitter have questioned my exposure of Martínez -one of the three MUD representatives who might have asked Jacobson/DoS not to sanction chavistas (the other two are Ramón José Medina and Ramón Guillermo Aveledo)- and the source of the information I published about it, I’m including here the 990 form of CDDA from 2012. It shows a substantial increase in contributions and grants (source?) between 2011 and 2012 (from $55,196 to $2,537,777 respectively). Martínez is linked to David Osío, a bolivarian “banker” with very dubious credentials. Martínez’s fellow CDDA board member, Medina, is an employee of Víctor Vargas. Could that money be coming from those “bankers”? Curiously, CDDA is a nonprofit corporation registered in Florida. In its 2012 annual report, submitted on April 26, 2012, it had three directors: Leopoldo Martínez, LMN Consulting LLC (LMN probably stands for Leopoldo Martínez), and NACOMA International Trust (another vehicle controlled by Martínez).