Isabel Rangel Barón is a Venezuelan businesswoman from Zulia state, sister of Daniel Esgardo Rangel Barón, and owner of 50% of the shares in the company Inversiones Rangel Barón (IRB). She is also the proprietor of Continental Medica, C.A., which received up to $331,803,298 from Cadivi between 2010 and 2014 for the importation of medical supplies.
Continental is the parent company of a network of 19 companies that during the same timeframe received as much as $455,631,647 in preferential dollars, with the Venezuelan Institute of Social Security (Ivss) being its main client, as reported by expresa.se.
Isabel, like all members of the Rangel Barón family, studied law at the University of Zulia (LUZ) and devoted herself to business. In the 1980s, she was a supplier of toys for the Zulia government and in 2004 she began working with Ivss.
In February 2014, she and her brother were sued by businessman José Alfredo Rodríguez, who accused them of having hi-jacked the contract from his company Rismed Oncology Systems with Ivss and diverting payments to their own company: Rismed Dyalisis Systems. The fraud, according to Rodríguez, amounted to $1.2 billion.
In 2015, a mother and her newborn daughter died in Venezuela, in the Uyapar Hospital in Puerto Ordaz, due to a lack of supplies and medical negligence. Six hemophiliac children suffered severe injuries due to a lack of prophylaxis, which the Venezuelan state had ceased to provide. Diabetes patients in Barquisimeto were at risk of entering into a coma or even losing their lives because they didn’t have access to insulin injections or pumps. Children with cancer couldn’t continue their treatment due to a shortage of microdrippers. Workers at the Pérez Carreño and Domingo Luciani hospitals in Caracas protested for inventory failures.
The list barely includes some cases aggravated by the lack of medical supplies reported by patients, employees, and organizations such as the Venezuelan Hemophilia Association and the Coalition of Organizations for the Right to Health and Life (Codevida), documented by the national press between July 1 and the first week of August 2015. All had a common supplier: the Venezuelan Institute of Social Security (IVSS), affiliated with the Ministry for the Social Labor Process (MPST), which is part of a healthcare system that manages 36 hospitals, 59 outpatient clinics, 5 popular lines in the country, and High-Cost Drug Pharmacies, as detailed on the website www.ivss.gov.ve.
All portrayed stories of hardship that contrasted with the amount of resources handled by the IVSS in the decade prior to 2015 for the acquisition and distribution of medical supplies. Only between 2010 and 2014, this health assistance entity spent $856,395,555 for the purchase abroad of 73,000 tons of medical supplies (of which 83% came from the United States), according to the international database on port movements at https://www.importgenius.com/. That amount included the $692,609,508 in preferential imports approved by the now-defunct Currency Administration Commission (Cadivi).
But the purchases of medical supplies abroad were not only the responsibility of the public organization led by the military Carlos Rotondaro Cova. There are also private companies that have supplied goods to the IVSS, such as a network of 19 companies managed by a family from Zulia. The State approved a total of $455 million 631 thousand 647 dollars at a preferential rate (6.30 bolívares per dollar) for the import of medical supplies for six firms from that group, a sum that represented a little over half of the 856 million dollars that Social Security acquired abroad in four years, as reported by the website Runrun.es.
Between 2004 and 2012, Continental Medica C.A., the parent company of this business network, received $331,803,298 from Cadivi, positioning it among the top 61 corporations in Venezuela that received the most preferential currency since the Hugo Chávez government imposed exchange controls in 2003. Specifically, it ranks among the top 14 companies in the health sector that received amounts greater than $300 million at a rate of 6.30. IVSS is the only state institution in that group.
Meanwhile, the amount in dollars awarded to this company by Cadivi matches the records from https://www.importgenius.com/: between 2009 and 2014, Continental Medica spent $327,317,907 on importing supplies, 90% of which entered through Maiquetía and the port of La Guaira.
However, the company based in Maracaibo was not only a beneficiary of Cadivi. Additionally, until September 2014, it received $2,463,582 from the National Center for Foreign Trade (Cencoex), an organization that replaced the previous currency administrator in 2014. With this, the total amount of preferential dollars granted solely to Continental Medica rose to $334.2 million. This amount could have been used to build at least 4 specialized hospitals of Barrio Adentro IV, considering the amount of $87,820,736 for each building, according to the investment projects 2014-2019 of the Ministry of Health, as outlined in the 2014 report.
The companies display common characteristics: small payrolls (ranging from 2 to 15 employees); low or no social media profiles; less than 10 years of existence; created during the initial years of chavismo (2001-2007) or acquired by family members within that period; their corporate purpose is the importation and distribution of medical supplies and equipment, and in 8 of the 19 cases, their main client is IVSS.
The main players in this family of health contractors were brothers Daniel Esgardo and Isabel Rangel Barón, who have direct involvement in 12 of the 19 companies registered in Venezuela, either as shareholders or members of the boards of directors (president and vice president), according to the National Contractors Registry (RNC) of Venezuela.
Isabel Rangel Barón and Daniel Esgardo Rangel Barón
In 2015, only three of the 12 companies owned by the Rangel Barón were updated in the RNC: Vaccines & Medical Supplies, Gusta Medica (Gumeca), and Corporación Hospitalaria del Zulia. The rest clearly showed their current status in the RNC: “Not updated. Ineligible to contract with the State”. Under those conditions, their provision of services to state institutions would violate the Public Procurement Law.
Continental Medica was registered in Maracaibo in 2001, two years before the exchange controls came into effect. According to the RNC, 100% of its capital belongs to another company, Inversiones IRB (short for “Inversiones Rangel Barón”), whose owners are the siblings Daniel Esgardo and Isabel, who share 50%-50% of the shares. Located in Caracas, it is 517 kilometers from the Zulia capital.
Venezuelan journalists approached the address of Inversiones IRB in Caracas as indicated in its RNC records in 2015. They found that the company owning Continental Medica was located in the residential building Ramca I in the populous parish of Los Jardines de El Valle (1). The “office” had no buzzer. No one answered the persistent knocking on the door (08/21/15). The neighbors “didn’t know what to say” about whether the office was operational for the company that the Venezuelan State had granted $334.3 million in preferential currency for importing medical supplies between 2004 and 2012.
Inversiones IRB also owns 50% of the shares in the Venezuelan Factory of Disposables, whose president is Daniel Esgardo Rangel Barón, and to which Cencoex approved $1,312,719 at a preferential rate in 2014.
Additionally, Venezuelan journalists traveled in 2015 to Maracaibo to verify if the address of Continental Medica matched the one stated in the RNC. At Avenida 12 with Calle 67 in the Tierra Negra sector of Zulia’s capital, there was no RB building (the initials referencing the surname Rangel Barón, which would also host the Corporación Hospitalaria del Zulia, another company in the group). There were no health sector companies on that street, only mechanical parts stores.
One notable feature of the Rangel Barón companies is their ambivalent nature. Based on the National Contractors Registry (RNC), it’s possible to trace the intricate network of firms and names where Continental Medica stands out as the major conduit. It is noteworthy that many of these state contractors had among their clients companies that are either owned by them or other family members. A scheme that appears to correspond to the Venezuelan saying, “they pay each other and give change.”
Article 71 of the Public Procurement Law states that one of the grounds for rejecting contract offers is that they come from the same proposer or are submitted by different individuals who participate, whether directly or indirectly, as partners, directors, or managers in other offers.
There are also cases where kinship is not just measured by names and surnames. For instance, the Corporation Eximamerica, headed by Jesús Ramón Torres Rodríguez (who owns 99.9% of the shares), was also the executive vice president of Petrolera Social (P&S), an energy sector company based in Maracaibo whose president is Daniel Esgardo Rangel Barón, as indicated in the RNC.
There were other cases described in the RNC: Gusta Médica, managed by Gabriela Beatriz and Patricia Elena Matute Rangel (daughters of Yolanda Rangel Barón); Rismed de Venezuela (whose owner is Liliana Di Nardo, first wife of Daniel Esgardo) and Inversiones Dam-Prax Internacional (belonging to Eduarda Laguna de Rangel, wife of José Antonio Rangel Barón).
However, the Rangel Barón family didn’t limit their “business ventures” to Venezuela, but also expanded them to other countries, where at least until 2015 they had 15 companies in Miami (where they own at least three houses in Doral), 10 in Panama, and three in Costa Rica.
The concentration of roles has also been another differentiating factor. Daniel Esgardo has been president of ten companies and a shareholder in eight registered in Venezuela. Meanwhile, Isabel Rangel Barón, known in the sector as “the drug queen,” is part of the board of directors of four firms and holds shares in four corporations.
Despite being one of the main clients of IVSS, the president of Continental Medica, Daniel Esgardo (the second of the Rangel Barón), is not registered in the health assistance system. According to his individual Social Security account, the last time he was registered was in 1979 when he worked at Fregersa de Maracaibo, a company selling auto parts.
The RNC certifies that his other three siblings also own health sector companies: Félix Alberto (Corporación Hospitalaria del Zulia in Maracaibo, with a branch in Miami), José Antonio (R.B Importadora), and Yolanda (with a company in Miami and registered in Gusta Medica, a company under her daughters’ names). The latter even collects her old-age pension from IVSS amounting to Bs. 7,421 monthly.
None of the 19 companies owned by the Rangel Barón (whose respective social capital totals Bs. 2,160 million) are mentioned in the annual report of the Ministry of Labor for the years 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2014 (to which IVSS is affiliated). There is no public performance balance of these contractors.
The Rangel Barón companies are also not affiliated with the Venezuelan Association of Distributors of Medical, Dental, Laboratory Equipment and Related Services (Avedem), as confirmed by the directors of this guild. Not just anyone can be a member of this organization founded 40 years ago, which groups 157 companies engaged in manufacturing, importing, and distributing services in the health area. Aspiring firms must meet a series of administrative transparency requirements such as: a copy of the commercial registration, balance sheets for the last three years, lists of shareholders, health registrations, recommendation letters from other Avedem members, industrial and commercial patents, and an adoption declaration of the code of ethics, among others.
There is no known public tender convened by IVSS in which these companies have submitted their offers. The IVSS website only displayed calls from 2015 and they were not directed to medical supplies providers.
The irregularities in contracting medical supply provisions for IVSS were verified by the General Comptroller of the Republic (CGR) in its management report of 2007. Specifically, it refers to the purchase abroad of materials for the treatment of hemodialysis intended for renal patients during 2004 and 2005, right when the Rangel Barón companies began to operate with Social Security. The document states that the IVSS authorities approved a budget of Bs. 222,950.19 million ($108.64 million at the time).
The selection “by hand” bypassed the Public Tender Law regulations. The oversight body determined that there was no “verified emergency,” as justified by the then IVSS board of directors for selecting foreign suppliers, therefore “the provider should have been selected by General Tender or Internationally Announced Tender and not by Direct Award,” stated the CGR of Venezuela.
The Comptroller also noted weaknesses in planning and controlling acquisitions; lack of compliance guarantees from favored companies; absence of internal control mechanisms, and delays in settling the initial commitment acquired by IVSS of Bs. 24,686.51 million, which, when substituted by two other purchase orders, increased the costs of complete hemodialysis kits from Bs. 70,176.00 million to Bs. 83,850.75 million (19.48%).
The official CGR document recalls that Article 17 of the Anti-Corruption Law states that “public officials and employees must manage public resources with criteria of rationality and efficiency, seeking to reduce expenditure and the best use of available resources in line with public purposes.”
Finding the headquarters of Continental Medica was as cumbersome for reporters in 2015 as unwrapping the web of companies founded by the Rangel Barón brothers.
As indicated by the RNC, seven companies shared the same address in Caracas at the Venezuelan Automotive Center, Avenida Nueva Granada, Local 15-A, opposite Inces: Corporación Eximamerica, Droguería Lemor, Rehem Medical, Unidad de Diálisis Juan Pablo II, Inversiones Lytel 2050, Corporación Hospimed, and Corporación Dynamic Medical.
But in the Automotive Center on Av. Nueva Granada, only the Dialysis Unit Juan Pablo II was still operating on the ground floor, its sign displaying the IVSS logo. The glass-door local with the name Rehem Medical, where the other firms were registered, is closed. When asked on 08/21/15 about the other medical supply companies, all neighbors without exception identified them with Continental Medica. “They left about three years ago, they moved to the Seguros La Paz Center in La California” (eastern Caracas), they asserted.
According to the RNC, in the Seguros La Paz Center located on Francisco de Miranda Avenue, Boleíta Sur, there were four companies dedicated to the marketing of medical supplies that had signed contracts with state bodies. They were located on the 7th floor, offices 71 and 72: NetMedica; I.S.T. Engineering and Technical Services; Rismet Medica; and Venezuelan International Marketing. They shared fixed phone numbers and in the case of the last two, their owner and president was: Yipsi Acevedo.
Based on validated data from the RNC, the companies have no relation to Continental Medica. However, at NetMedica’s headquarters, they confirmed that this company was part of the “same group of companies.”
Continental Medica occupied the entire Planta Libre (PL) level of the Seguros La Paz Center. Two elevators had direct access. There were no signs identifying it at the entrance, and employees dressed in uniforms without logos. An internal bulletin board indicated the name of the company Inversiones Lytel 2050, whose president and owner is precisely Daniel Esgardo Rangel Barón, as per the RNC.
At another address indicated by the RNC, the office on the ground floor of the Marra building on Semprún street in Santa Mónica, Caracas, where the companies Medical Equipment Alfamed and Omega Health Representations operated, which received over 100 million dollars from Cadivi, was closed. Neighbors said that “they left about three years ago from there.”
How could a family without an established background in health grow into a business group in just a decade thanks to the importation of medical supplies for the Venezuelan state, even opening 19 companies in Venezuela and 28 more across Panama, the United States, and Costa Rica, along with other foreign properties?
The Rangel Barón siblings come from a humble immigrant family that settled in Maracaibo in the 1970s after initially being in Mérida. Their mother became a naturalized citizen on October 8, 1976, as recorded in the Official Gazette No. 1910.
Those who have known them for decades remember them as extremely close and family-oriented siblings, but also ambitious. Time has shown their knack for business. They all studied law at the University of Zulia (LUZ). Daniel, the second of the Rangel Barón, started with a car parts business, RB Automotive, on Avenida 15 in Las Delicias, Maracaibo (his ownership is stated in a record from the Superior Contentious Tax Court of Zulia dated December 14, 2006). Isabel began as a supplier of Christmas toys for the Zulia government in the mid-80s.
Isabel Rangel Barón
They arrived at IVSS in 2004 through American-Honduran businessman José Alfredo Rodríguez, the second husband of Liliana Di Nardo, who was previously married to Daniel Esgardo Barón Rangel. From this first marriage came three children: Daniel Alberto, David, and Dianella Mykitta (who uses her married name).
Daniel Esgardo Rangel Barón and Liliana Di Nardo’s children made their way to the US after their mother married Rodríguez. They arrived in Alabama and obtained American residency when DiNardo married Rodríguez.
Rodríguez has maintained business relations with Venezuela for over two decades. His company OncoAmerica (founded in 2003) has oncology centers in Mexico, the United States, and Venezuela.
From Alabama, he told reporters in 2015 that he established his first contacts with IVSS between 1999 and 2004. With his company Rismed Oncology Systems (created in March 2003 in Alabama, USA), he signed a first contract with the Institute during Jesús Mantilla’s presidency for the supply of 351,780 dialysis kits for a total of $5,919,400 (distributed in two purchase orders). In 2005, he appointed Daniel Esgardo (the ex of his then-wife) as his sales representative in Venezuela. The name Rismed comes from Rodríguez Imaging Systems.
Rismed Oncology Systems was the supplier of dialysis kits for IVSS until April 3, 2006, when Rangel Barón notified Rodríguez that the organization had canceled the contract. The decision surprised the owner because he felt the contract had been “successful.” However, he accepted closing the chapter with Social Security in Venezuela to focus on oncology centers in other regions, like Mexico.
Six years later, on July 27, 2012, while preparing a contract with a client in Mexico, Rodríguez noticed another company with a name similar to his: Rismed Dialysis Systems, registered in Alabama in 2006, the same year IVSS allegedly suspended the original contract in Caracas. He also discovered that this new firm continued to receive payments from IVSS. Its owner was his stepson, Daniel Alberto Rangel Rodríguez, son of his sales representative in Caracas and his ex-wife Liliana Di Nardo.
This means Rodríguez realized that both Daniel Esgardo and his son Daniel Alberto Rangel Di Nardo “had stolen his company’s contract with IVSS by creating another company with a similar name in the US, to which they redirected IVSS payments,” he claimed. The owner of the original Rismed asserts that the fraud amounts to $1.2 billion.
Daniel Alberto Rangel Di Nardo
Rodríguez claims that in 2006 Rangel Barón attempted to transfer the million-dollar contract to his company Continental Medica, but IVSS president Jesús Mantilla refused. This led them to create another company with the same name, Rismed Dialysis (2006), and open a bank account (AM South Bank) under the new company. They also founded other firms with the same name in Venezuela (March 2007) and Miami (July 2008) under their son Daniel Alberto’s name.
All these relationships are substantiated in case No. CV 13-S-310-NE presented by Rodríguez in the Federal Court of Alabama in February 2014, as verified in the US legal case database Pacer.
This version tried to be contrasted with those involved. Runrun.es called the numbers provided in the RNC, but was unable to reach them.
The $50 Million Lawsuit
In February 2014, on behalf of Rismed Oncology System, Rodríguez filed a lawsuit for $50 million in the Federal Court of Alabama (case number No. CV 13-S-310-NE) against Daniel Esgardo and Isabel Rangel Barón, as well as the companies Rismed Dialysis Systems (Alabama), Rismed Dialysis System (Florida), both registered under the name of his stepson, Daniel Alberto, and Rismed Dialysis Systems (Venezuela), in the name of Isabel and Daniel Esgado.
Isabel Rangel Barón
Rodríguez withdrew the lawsuit in April 2014 due to “family agreements,” the plaintiff explained.
The growth of Continental Medica as a supplier of imported medical supplies for IVSS began around 2005, particularly under the administration of Carlos Rotondaro Cova. Although Rotondaro was appointed by Chávez as president of Social Security in May 2007 – when he was still a lieutenant colonel – he had been part of the board since 2003 when Jesús Mantilla presided over the organization.
Rotondaro, who was promoted to Brigadier General in 2012, is part of the 1987 promotion “Tomás Montilla,” which includes figures from the governments of Chávez and Maduro, like Diosdado Cabello (president of the National Assembly), José Gregorio Vielma Mora (governor of Táchira), and Jesse Chacón (who served as president of Corpoelec until August 2015).
Rotondaro is the longest-serving head of IVSS, except for two short periods: in 2009 and 2010 when he was in the Ministry for Health (G.O 39,232) and in 2013 when Magally Viña Castro was appointed (G.O 40,283), who is the mother-in-law of “the first combatant,” Cilia Flores. Despite his long tenure at the Institute, his contribution record does not appear in the IVSS digital archive.
On his Twitter account @crotondaro, he promotes his involvement in training staff on how to use social media to spread the messages of “the revolution.” Unlike other public agency facilities dominated by red and portraits of Chávez, the remodeled main headquarters of IVSS in Caracas maintains the historic corporate blue that identifies the agency created in 1944.
A robbery that occurred in September 2014 highlights the relationship of the Rangel Barón with IVSS. Miranda police detained a man trying to illegally sell 720 hemodialysis machines from Rismed Dialysis Systems, which were taken from IVSS warehouses in Caucagua.
The Rangel Barón siblings have also ventured into other sectors quite distinct from the importation and distribution of medical supplies. In the oil sector, Daniel Esgardo Rangel Barón acquired Petrolera Social P&S (formerly Posada Sandrea Construction and Services) and Inversiones Generales Rio Mar.
The Public Registry of Panama (RPP) indicates that Daniel Esgardo is a director of the company Cargo Three Inc, traded as Pan Air Cargo, a charter airline that began operations in 1990 and was revived in 2010 with funding from the Rangel Barón companies in the US. Its capital is $2 million, according to the RPP.
Isabel Rangel Barón, on the other hand, owns 70% of the shares in the agricultural company Leche Mía, which primarily focuses on processing, marketing, distribution, and transportation of food, as well as the sale, import, and export of all kinds of food and agricultural products.
Isabel Rangel Barón
Business in Panama
The months of emergency due to COVID-19 in Latin America have uncovered a bunch of irregularities in the purchases of medical equipment and supplies by countries to confront the pandemic of the new coronavirus SARS CoV-2. One of those businesses relates to artificial ventilators or respirators, equipment that has been crucial in the strategy to save patients with respiratory complications. One of these stories of dubious procurement, questionable negotiation, and equipment performance issues links Panama with Venezuela.
The three Venezuelan brothers managed to negotiate with the Panamanian state to supply hospitals in that country with dozens of ventilators due to the COVID-19 emergency. Carlos, Roberto, and Rommel Bogarin Rangel, with their company Primo Medical Group, became one of thirteen suppliers to the country’s Ministry of the Presidency. In March of this year, they signed a contract for $2.3 million to supply 53 units for assisted respiration, both intensive care and non-invasive, of which only 32 units were ultimately recorded as delivered.
According to an investigation initiated in May by the Panamanian newspaper La Prensa, the letter of commitment signed with the State to supply the equipment and receive payment afterward wouldn’t have seemed remarkable if it weren’t for the history of Primo Medical Group. However, it became evident that it was a company without any track record in the medical equipment sector in Panama (it had only been involved in selling disposable products); unknown to other firms in the field, with no import records of medical equipment over the last ten years according to Panama’s customs authority data, and with no previous sales of medical supplies to the Panamanian Government. There was no prior experience to conclude that this company would be a good supplier, yet they were the only ones with equipment available for immediate delivery, according to a report by La Prensa de Panamá and Armando.info.
What was stated on their website was their claim to be part of a “major family business group that has been involved in the marketing and distribution of the highest quality medical supplies since 1980.” Primo Medical Group is currently run by the third generation of a family whose genealogy roots back to Maracaibo, the capital of Zulia state in western Venezuela.
The Rangel surname of these young men comes from the Rangel Barón family, another group of brothers (their uncles) known in Venezuela for revelations made by the press since 2015. According to investigations, the Rangel Barón family leads a network of companies dedicated to medical equipment and supplies and dialysis centers, which, with Continental Medica at the helm, have been regularly favored with hundreds of contracts from the Venezuelan Institute of Social Security (IVSS), and assignments of millions in preferential dollars from the former Currency Administration Commission (Cadivi).
The ventilators delivered by Primo Medical Group to the Panamanian government bear the German brand Dräger. But they came with a series of surprises far from the quality image of German engineering: they arrived damaged, with missing parts, with manufacturing dates earlier than indicated by the supplier. The company claimed that the equipment was from 2015 but, in reality, they were from 2013 and 2014. The software was outdated.
Reports from four of the hospitals in Panama that received this equipment, summarized in six letters sent to the Ministry of Health, detail the failures presented: several ventilators arrived without compressors or humidifiers, with incompatible air and oxygen hose connectors used in some of the hosting health centers, ventilation circuits with expiration dates between 2015 and 2017, without the intubation valve, with unreliable internal batteries due to their manufacturing years, and even one of them arrived with a broken screen and another with a damaged card, among other ruinous details.
The reviews concluded that the equipment had remained “in the warehouse for a long time,” which would explain their less than optimal and, therefore, risky conditions for any intensive care patient. No respirator was current, nor was Primo Medical Group an authorized representative of the Dräger brand in Panama, as clarified by the German headquarters at the time. Thus, the origin of those Dräger ventilators that managed to get a quote from the State remains a mystery.
While it is clear that Primo Medical Group was not an authorized company to distribute Dräger equipment in Panama, at the same time, there is a striking coincidence that the Rangel Barón did have those rights, but only for Venezuela. The company Continental Medica, owned by Daniel Rangel Barón, uncle of the Bogarin Rangel brothers, is the authorized representative of the German brand for the Venezuelan market.
This is one of the coincidences that connect the Venezuelan Bogarin Rangel brothers with the Colombian-Venezuelan Rangel Barón brothers, their direct uncles on the maternal side.
Additionally, it’s known that Roberto and Rommel Bogarín Rangel are shown as partners of their aunt, Isabel Rangel Barón, in a private foundation in Panama called Alastor; they appear as advisory directors and she as president. In Venezuela, Isabel was once vice president of Continental Medica while her brother Daniel Rangel Barón served as president, at least until 2015, when allegations against the company were made public. She was also the contact person for her clients, as seen in the National Contractors Registry (RNC). Currently, only Daniel remains on the board.
The Rangel Barón family, owners of a network of 19 companies in Venezuela and another 28 abroad – ten of them in Panama – received more than $440 million in preferential currency for the purchase of medical supplies for the Venezuelan Institute of Social Security. Eight of the 19 companies owned by the Rangel Barón family were contractors for the Venezuelan state, violating the Public Procurement Law, according to an investigation published by Runrun.es in November 2015.
Only one of those companies, Continental Medica, received over $330 million in preferential currency and hundreds of contracts with IVSS for the provision of hospital beds, anesthesia machines, cardiac monitors, and vital signs monitoring equipment, among a wide variety of medical equipment and surgical supplies, as can be verified in the RNC.
Despite this public exposure associated with alleged irregularities, Continental Medica is currently still enabled to contract with the Venezuelan state. It was reported that during these pandemic months, it offered Dräger ventilators to several clinics in Caracas, including IVSS, but the offers were rejected for being outdated models from 2012. This information was neither denied nor confirmed by the company upon inquiry.
Conversely, Continental Medica’s management clarified in a letter addressed to the editorial office of Armando.info that it has no pending “inquiries or processes with administrative bodies or the justice administration” and that it conducts all its activities in accordance with Venezuelan laws.
The last import of ventilators made by this company was in 2012, its spokespeople reported. In their communication, the Continental Medica management also denied being a supplier to Primo Medical Group and having negotiated any sale of Dräger equipment, which it distributes in Venezuela, destined for the Panamanian market. They also denied having any business relationship with the Bogarin Rangel brothers.
But somehow, blood ties also end up being business links: the father of the young people doing business in Panama, Rommel Bogarin Grau, served as “commissioner” of Medical Equipment Alfamed, Omega Health Representatives, and Corporación Hospitalaria del Zulia, companies from the 19-company conglomerate that the Rangel Barón manages.
In this porcelain crucible, there are other pieces that come together. In addition to Primo Medical Group Corp, created in 2017 to engage in medical supplies and hospital disposables, there is Primo Medical Group HK Panama Corp, a company that was named Boga Group Corp since its inception in 2015 until May 2019, according to the Public Registry of Panama. That year it not only changed its name but also ceased to be dedicated to the buying, selling, and distribution of vehicle parts.
Their owners and representatives, Carlos and Roberto Bogarin Rangel, worked in companies in the automotive and parts sector in Zulia state several years ago – before moving to Panama – as documented in Venezuelan social security records and corroborated by their circle of friends when recalling.
The eldest brother of Carlos and Roberto, named Rommel Bogarin Rangel, is also part of the board in both Primo companies.
In Venezuela, Rommel Bogarin Jr. still appears as an active worker at Droguería Química de Venezuela, Droquiven. This company distributes, represents, and sells products generally used in health centers and laboratories, as well as importing and exporting medical equipment, providing services and maintenance. According to records, he is the executive director and majority shareholder. Furthermore, in the past, between 2006 and 2007, he served as the executive director of another health sector company, called the Corporación Hospitalaria del Zulia. Both were contractors for IVSS and the Ministry of Health, supplying medical-surgical supplies and medicines.
Meanwhile, his younger brothers show no trace of having been involved in the health business in Venezuela. Carlos Bogarin Rangel also was a state contractor but with a company in the petrochemical, coal, and industrial sector that provided services to the oil company Pdvsa. Carlos was part of Petrolera Social’s (P&S) management team as the managing director while his uncle, Daniel Esgardo Rangel Barón, served as president, at least in 2007, a date which is recorded in the National Contracting System. Along with his brother, Roberto Bogarin Rangel, he shared partnership in an IT company.
After the reported failures of the equipment delivered by Primo Medical Group, the Bogarin Rangel company was forced to sign an agreement with Dräger Panama to repair the equipment, update them, and deliver missing pieces. They also committed to meet a series of requirements ranging from a three-year warranty to submitting the manufacturer’s certification of having availability of spare parts for a minimum of seven years.
When prorating the cost of the 53 ventilators that the Venezuelan merchants quoted to the Panamanian state at $2.3 million, it results that each unit would be sold at an average of $43,000, an elevated amount considering the prices available in the Panamanian market. The Dräger company in Panama itself offers ventilators priced between $6,000 and $17,000, while the same models that Primo Medical Group included in their offer can be found online at prices lower than, ranging from $17,000 to $32,000.
Even more: considering that the manufacturing of these respirators dates back to 2013 and 2014, they should carry a discount of around 30%, remarked two medical equipment traders in Panama.
All indications suggest that the Bogarin Rangel brothers sought to bolster their finances by serving as suppliers to the Panamanian government, something that their Rangel Barón relatives have known how to do on Venezuelan soil.
Comments on social media in 2020 claimed that Isabel Rangel Barón had supposedly passed away due to cancer, stemming from the stress generated by investigations that US authorities maintained against her. It was also said that Isabel Rangel Barón had purchased a villa in the luxurious Country Club urbanization in Caracas that belonged to the controversial businessman Carlos Kaufman, but later Isabel’s daughter allegedly put it up for sale.
However, there is no official confirmation of the businesswoman’s death, and today on Twitter, “@DeGuisos,” an account attributed to “Isabel Rangel Barón,” publishes cooking recipes under the name of the businesswoman and the title “Guisos de Isabel,” as if trying to hide the truth about her business affairs.
