There is no moment of peace at BOD. Just when it seemed that the announcement of agreements with a group of depositors from Banco del Orinoco N.V. in Curacao would bring calm to the bank’s tense situation, it appears it was just a tactic to cover up more serious information.
The news that has spread like wildfire in the country’s banking sector is that Jesús Escudero Estévez, personal attorney of Víctor Vargas Irausquín and the banker’s right-hand man, has left the country and is allegedly cooperating with the FBI regarding money laundering cases against the mogul.
Escudero reportedly left, with the institution’s permission, two weeks ago under the pretense of traveling to Miami to get vaccinated against COVID-19. Although the trip was meant to last a month, as soon as he landed in the U.S., he stopped responding to phone calls and emails. Also, according to a source from the same institution, his WhatsApp account has appeared inactive for days. Tensions escalated to the point where Vargas allegedly asked Nicolás Maduro to issue a warrant for Escudero’s arrest.
Contrary to the norm—since all communications related to operations in Antigua and Curacao bear his signature—the lawyer did not approve the statement from last weekend, which was hastily issued to mitigate the publication of a devastating article published by Armando Info this Sunday.
While the lawyer has been negotiating with the FBI for months to become a collaborator in the fraud and money laundering investigations against Víctor Vargas, the trigger for his decision was the release of the book “Alex Saab, La verdad” by Colombian journalist Gerardo Reyes, which directly implicates Carlos Balilla Battistini Samudio, another of Victor Vargas’s partners in his Caribbean operations, with the businessman. To avoid being implicated in drug trafficking cases, Escudero allegedly accepted the offer from U.S. authorities.
Jesús Escudero Estévez is a key figure in the payment operations to depositors of BOI Bank in Antigua and Banco del Orinoco in Curacao, as he is the one who decides which depositors get paid and which do not. A managing partner at the law firm Torres Plaz & Araujo with an impressive professional background, he has also made history in Venezuelan law by ensuring that divorces could be processed even when one spouse refused.