The man parked the vehicle, turned off the engine, and stared at the bicolor building with curved lines and large windows, surrounded by palm trees. It looked almost welcoming. He hesitated about whether to get out or stay. A phrase had been echoing in his mind for several weeks: “…the day will come when they will lock us all up; they will lock us up…”.
These words had been spoken by Gois, a member of the network that had been trying to distribute 560 million dollars among participants in a shadowy and illicit operation involving Pdvsa funds for over a year.
He took a deep breath, got out of the car, and headed towards the Homeland Security Investigation (HSI) offices in Miami. For Pedro Binaggia, there was no turning back now.
What follows is the narrative (with some narrative license) made by Pedro Binaggia, an Italian-Venezuelan financial operator residing in Panama, to HSI Florida, reflecting in the US accusation against Francisco Convit Guruceaga dated July 24, 2018, which, in addition to the US, involved agencies and law enforcement from Spain, Italy, the UK, and Malta.
In the official document, Binaggia states that he was contacted in late 2014 by Convit (a partner of Alejandro Betancourt, Orlando Alvarado – son of Javier Alvarado, former president of Bariven – and Pedro Trebbau at Derwick Associates) and Carmelo Urdaneta, legal advisor to the Ministry of Petroleum of Venezuela, to carry out a supposed currency exchange operation, where they claimed they would sell him 100 million dollars at a favorable rate.
However, they were slow to send the foreign exchange (“forex”) sales contract to formalize the agreement, although this didn’t initially worry Binaggia, as the funds were supposedly coming from a duly regulated European financial entity. According to Binaggia, his goal was to offer the dollars to his clients in Venezuela.
This is how Binaggia asked Convit to transfer part of the funds to a trust of which Binaggia was the final beneficiary. Convit carried out the operation and informed him that the funds would arrive in euros, not dollars.
By mid-February 2015, Binaggia had already received about 78 million euros in various transfers and was supposedly still asking Convit for the forex contract between his trust and Portmann Capital Management Ltd., which turned out to be the financial arm of a company registered in Madrid: Columbus One Properties SL.
All signs indicated that this amount corresponded to bribes that Convit and his Derwick partners had to pay to officials Urdaneta and Abraham E. Ortega, Director of Finance at Pdvsa, who had facilitated the operation.
Finally, Convit sent an obviously forged document: a fake joint venture contract for 600 million dollars between Eaton Global Services Limited, a shell company registered in Hong Kong owned by Raúl Gorrín Belisario – a member of Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores’ inner circle – and Binaggia’s trust. The supposed business of the joint venture was to grant loans in bolívares to PDVSA.
Binaggia informed Convit that the fake agreement could not be used and that he needed the original underlying exchange contracts. Days later in Venezuela, Urdaneta delivered the documents to Binaggia and explained that he had obtained them from a Pdvsa official identified in the accusation as Conspirator 1, likely Alvaro Ledo Nass, legal advisor to Pdvsa.
The papers that Binaggia provided to HSI-Miami revealed the source of the Pdvsa funds and the nature of the scheme.
The set of documents consisted of three pieces: a loan contract in bolívares payable in dollars between Pdvsa and Rantor Capital CA – a shell company of Raúl Gorrín registered in Anzoátegui – for an amount of 7.2 billion bolívares; a subsequent contract between Rantor and Eaton Global in which the former ceded its rights as a creditor of Pdvsa to the latter, and a letter from Eaton Global to Pdvsa, specifically to Víctor Aular Blanco, Vice President of Finance, informing of the exchange, requesting that payment be made in euros (paradoxically, they had no accounts in bolívares), and be transferred to Portmann Capital Management Ltd., a financial entity registered in Malta, owned by Swiss citizens Kurt and Yves Portmann, for Eaton Global.
In summary, Raúl Gorrín was left with the obligation to pay Pdvsa about 7.2 billion bolívares (valued at 35 million euros) and received 510 million euros in exchange.
The US accusation describes this operation as an “ingenuous attempt” to cover up what was clearly “embezzlement”.
It was already clear that this was not just a currency transaction, but rather a money laundering operation in which Binaggia was expected to launder the proceeds from the embezzlement of Pdvsa funds and make bribery payments to the officials who facilitated it.
The risks were high, and Binaggia knew it because he had previously participated in similar schemes involving the exchange differential business in operations with the Treasury and with Pdvsa itself, in the case of the contract with Administradora Atlantic 17107 and Violet Advisors SA run by the brothers Luis and Ignacio Oberto Anselmi. Rumors were circulating that US authorities were investigating him.
From the meeting with the HSI department in Miami, in early 2016, Binaggia emerged as a “confidential source” (CS, for short) who would, in the following months, provide dozens of documents and recordings for what was dubbed the Money Flight Operation, in which several US and European agencies ended up working.
As part of the operation, Binaggia continued to work with Convit and José Vicente Amparan, identified in the accusation as a professional money launderer.
This is how Binaggia made cash payments in Venezuela ordered by Urdaneta and Conspirator 1 – likely Álvaro Ledo Nass – to themselves and to Aular, who received a million euros in cash.
In total, Binaggia made transfers worth approximately 15 million euros during the summer of 2015, including several electronic transactions in dollars ordered by Convit and Urdaneta, until he began to resist making more payments, using the liquidation of his trust as an excuse. Binaggia argued that he could not continue without the promised foreign exchange contract, which the banks were requesting for compliance reasons.
Convit and Urdaneta kept pressing Binaggia to make the ordered transfers. Finally, they summoned him to a meeting in Convit’s office in Caracas. It was here that the now-famous encounter occurred, where Convit, with a gun on his desk, controlled the remote for a German Shepherd dog’s collar and intimidated Binaggia by saying, “I can’t always control it.”
During this meeting, Amparan told Binaggia that the fake joint venture contract had already been provided to the banks working with Portmann Capital Management Ltd. in Canada and Malta, making it impossible to replace it with a simple foreign exchange contract; in any case, more fake contracts would be needed. At this point, Binaggia stated that he had requested to return the Pdvsa funds and reverse the transactions, which was, of course, impossible.
In the following weeks, the group’s activities focused on replacing the fake joint venture contract with another “better” one, also fake, to justify the initial transfers to Binaggia, while efforts to finalize the agreed bribes to Urdaneta and Ortega continued.
In the recordings made by Binaggia, the group members explicitly acknowledged that they were involved in a money laundering and illicit enrichment operation.
Over the months, as the operation stalled, Gorrín and Ortega brought in other international financial operators such as Matthias Krull, a banker from a Swiss financial entity, and Gustavo Hernández Frieri, a Colombian born and naturalized US citizen, described in the accusation as a “professional money launderer”.
Binaggia continued to operate with Urdaneta, Ortega, and Conspirator 1 -likely Alvaro Ledo Nass – to try to distribute the Pdvsa funds among themselves and other members of the scheme, based on the additional false contracts offered by Amparan.
From a recording of a meeting in Madrid in March 2017, to discuss the use of fake bonds in the scheme, it is clear that the operators were concerned about ensuring their share of the loot reached the children of Cilia Flores – Maduro’s stepchildren – Walter, Yoswal, and Yosser Gavidia Flores.
The meeting took place at the headquarters of Columbus One Properties SL, owned by Ralph Steinmann, Luis Fernando Vuteff García, Amparan, and Darío Ale. The group’s financial operations were carried out through Portmann Capital Management Ltd.
In several moments of the conversation, Urdaneta and Binaggia refer to the need to pay a part of the operation’s profits (159 million euros) to members of the Venezuelan regime, whom they refer to at different times as “the kids”, “the lady’s children”, “the chamos”, or “the Cilia acquaintances”.
On December 15, 2014, Víctor Aular, Vice President of Finance at Pdvsa, received instructions from the Executive Committee to sign a loan contract in bolívares payable in dollars with a company owned by Raúl Gorrín. Two days later, on December 17, Aular signed a contract with Rantor Capital CA on behalf of PDVSA for an amount of 7.2 billion bolívares. This was a contract similar to that signed in March 2012 by the same Aular on behalf of Pdvsa with Administradora Atlantic 17107, which was denounced this month as illegal by Tarek El Aissami before the regime’s prosecutor’s office.
At the time, the official exchange rate between the bolívar and the dollar was 6.30, meaning the 7.2 billion bolívares equated to 1.143 billion dollars. However, in the parallel market, the rate was 182.23 bolívares per dollar, so Rantor (Raúl Gorrín) only had to change less than 40 million dollars in the black market to obtain the 7.2 billion bolívares he needed to lend to Pdvsa. The remaining difference, about 560 million dollars, was the profit from the exchange differential shared among Raúl Gorrín, the children of Cilia Flores, Nicolás Maduro’s stepchildren, the Derwick group, senior officials of the oil company and the Ministry of Petroleum, advisors, bankers, and financial operators.
That was not the only operation Convit, his Derwick partners, and Raúl Gorrín executed with Pdvsa funds.
In May 2015, when Cilia Flores’ nephew, Erik Malpica Flores – the current strongman of Miraflores – was in charge of Pdvsa’s finances, the scheme had doubled that amount to 1.2 billion dollars through an expansion of the 2014 contract. Pdvsa sources indicate that the group repeated similar operations almost a dozen times.
Gorrín turned to his banker, Matthias Krull, to launder the “gain” from this second operation and distribute the corresponding portion to other members of the scheme: about 600 million dollars, deposited by Pdvsa in Gazprombank.
In October 2016, Krull met with Binaggia in Panama and explained that he was looking for a bank to deposit funds from a currency operation between his client – Gorrín – and Pdvsa. Binaggia replied he could explore some options but needed the justifying contract of the source of the funds. Days later, Krull sent the requested document, which was an amendment to the original contract between Pdvsa and Rantor, doubling the line of credit from 7.2 billion to 14 billion bolívares. The modification was dated May 25, 2015, and specifically included the initial loan contract.
Among the following communications, Krull emailed Binaggia copies of Gorrín’s and Mario Bonilla Valera’s passports, a friend and frontman for the children of Cilia Flores.
After several meetings, both in Miami and Panama, to clarify how to transfer the funds, and according to a table attached to an email in the possession of US authorities, the 600 million dollars were distributed as follows:
A sheet titled “Detailed PDVSA Income” lists ten transfers from PDVSA from December 29, 2014, to February 3, 2015, totaling 511,913,270 euros.
Another worksheet titled “600k Operation Summary” shows that, out of the 511 million euros:
20,476,530.83 were assigned to Portmann Capital Management Ltd., constituting a 4% fee. Subsequently, the company would be fined by the Malta financial authority in August 2018 upon learning of the charge against Convit.
227,265,537.52 euros went to “Boli” (Convit and Betancourt) who transferred 78.8 million euros to Binaggia (the trigger for the Money Flight Operation) and the rest, around 148,465,000 Euros, to themselves through shell companies Volbor Vontobel and Explotación Vencon.
159,085,876.26 euros were allocated to “the chamos” (the children of Cilia Flores, Maduro’s stepchildren).
68,179,661.26 euros were designated for Raúl Gorrín, who sent dozens of dollar transfers through banks in Malta and Austria, including payments for aircraft and yachts in Miami, Florida.
The remaining 36,905,664.87 euros were accounted for as the cost of the initial 7.2 billion bolívares used to obtain the 511 million Euros.
According to Pdvsa sources, Gorrín and his Derwick partners would have carried out at least nine similar operations.
Four years after the US accusation against Francisco Convit, the officials, intermediaries, and financial operators involved in the scheme are either imprisoned or in hiding.
Francisco Convit is in Venezuela, unable to leave due to a US arrest warrant and under the regime’s watch, which fears he might provide information like others involved have done.
Meanwhile, Alejandro Betancourt was accused this month by the regime’s prosecutor – in the context of the case against Rafael Ramírez – for several corruption cases in Pdvsa, including those related to the Oberto brothers (Administradora Atlantic 17170), resulting in the seizure of a house in the Country Club of Caracas and a helicopter. Investigations into Betancourt’s businesses with PetroZamora (Zulia) are also being reviewed.
Raúl Gorrín has been on the US wanted list since 2019 in connection with the former national treasurer Alejandro Andrade’s case, who was sentenced to ten years in prison and confessed to receiving 1 billion dollars in bribes from Gorrín for facilitating operations like those described here during Andrade’s and Claudia Díaz Guillén’s terms, who is currently being prosecuted in a US court. Gorrín, currently in Venezuela under the regime’s protection – for now – is also being investigated in connection with the Money Flight Operation.
Matthias Krull, the German banker raised in Venezuela, residing in Panama, and an executive at Julius Baer, was arrested in 2018 at Miami Airport. After pleading guilty, he became a “star witness” who recruited other Swiss bankers as witnesses for the prosecution. In exchange for his cooperation, a judge reduced his original ten-year sentence to three and a half years in 2020. In his statement to the authorities, Krull acknowledged having participated in a meeting at Raúl Gorrín’s office in Caracas where he met Cilia Flores’ three children, Maduro’s stepchildren, who obtained nearly 200 million dollars from the irregular currency scheme with Pdvsa orchestrated by Gorrín and the bolichicos.
Gustavo Hernandez Frieri was arrested in Sicily, Italy, in July 2018, days after the accusation against Convit became public, from where he was extradited to the US. In 2021, a federal judge sentenced him to four years in prison after he pleaded guilty to money laundering in 2019. In April 2022, a Florida court seized the mansion that served as residence for Hernández Frieri and his family in Miami, which was valued at nearly 5 million dollars.
Abraham Ortega surrendered to US authorities in 2018 and pleaded guilty. In May 2021, he was sentenced to two years and four months in prison after admitting to having received over 12 million dollars in bribes transferred to US financial institutions. Ortega received a significant reduction of his sentence, previously five years, for being the first Venezuelan official to cooperate with US federal authorities in the case.
Carmelo Urdaneta surrendered in Miami in August 2020 to face money laundering and corruption charges. He was released on a 1.5 million dollar bail. In July 2021, he reached a plea deal with the prosecution and pleaded guilty to conspiracy to launder money. In 2022, he was sentenced to four years in prison. Due to his cooperation, Urdaneta was only charged with one of the charges. However, he was fined 35,000 dollars and had 49 million dollars worth of assets seized, including a 5.3 million dollar apartment in Porsche Design Tower in Sunny Isles Beach, along with two apartments in Miami Beach and the funds of a Swiss bank account.
However, not all former Pdvsa officials surrendered to cooperate and try to reduce their sentences, confiscations, and fines.
José Vicente Amparan, upon learning that US justice was investigating these events, fled Spain, where he resided, on a flight to Turkey, from where he returned to Venezuela. Before fleeing, Amparan handed a backpack full of documents and a computer to his wife, which she abandoned in the locker of a gym in downtown Madrid. Spanish police were able to recover this material to present it to justice within the framework of the so-called Operation Carabela.
After being linked to the scheme due to the transfer of almost 200 million dollars from Pdvsa to the children of Cilia Flores, Maduro’s stepchildren, Mario Bonilla was summoned to a hearing on August 16, 2018, in Florida, which he did not attend. For this reason, he was declared a fugitive from US justice. It is presumed that he is in Caracas.
Luis Fernando Vuteff, a partner at Columbus One Properties, was arrested in Spain in 2018. He was on provisional release when he was arrested again in Switzerland in June 2022 and extradited to the US two months later. It is still awaited whether he will also plead guilty and cooperate with the authorities, or if, according to the contract, he will maintain his innocence.
Pedro Binaggia is thought to be living in Miami.
The Venezuelan Attorney General, Tarek William Saab, reported in late August the arrest of Víctor Aular, who was Vice President of Finance at PDVSA. The arrest falls under the accusation made a day earlier by Oil Minister Tarek El Aissami against Rafael Ramírez, who had been head of the oil company for over ten years.
The Maduro regime accuses Ramírez of having stolen 4.85 billion dollars through “a fraudulent line of credit in which Pdvsa supposedly made 28 payments to two funds abroad without having received any loans.” These events took place ten years ago.
This concerns the irregular financing contract of Pdvsa with Administradora Atlantic 17107 CA from 2012, which, by the way, was first reported exclusively by this medium, Cuentas Claras Digital, in May 2016.
In response to El Aissami’s accusation, Saab opened an investigation into the case and issued measures to secure properties and assets against Juan Andrés Wallis Brandt, head of Administradora Atlantic 17107 CA, one of the companies used in the scheme; Víctor Aular Blanco and financial operators Luis Oberto Anselmi and Ignacio Oberto Anselmi, Rafael Ramírez, and Nervis Villalobos, among others.
The video of Aular’s testimony, clearly forced by the usual intimidation from the regime, was not fully published to protect Raúl Gorrín and his partners, which include Malpica Flores and the children of Cilia Flores. In it, Aular also detailed the contract between Pdvsa and Gorrín’s companies (Rantor and Eaton Global).
Days after the rushed accusation from Saab, other accusations from the “prosecutor” ensued, in which it became evident that the regime intended to sideline the Atlantic issue.
Finally, if the opaque contract of Pdvsa with Atlantic is illegal, as the regime now claims, how does that affect the contract of the oil company with Raúl Gorrín’s company Rantor, which has similar characteristics, in which Maduro’s stepchildren themselves are involved?
Moreover, if Aular signed both similar contracts, how do you explain that the Public Prosecutor’s Office, through prosecutor Farik Karin Mora Salcedo, requested in 2020 the dismissal of the Rantor case (Gorrín), a request that was approved by Judge Luisa Romero, while in the Atlantic case, they announce criminal actions and keep Aular imprisoned, without addressing the current businesses with the currency differential carried out by Gorrín and other supposed entrepreneurs close to Erik Malpica Flores?
As we have been saying, the Venezuelan judicial system controlled by the autocrat only acts when it serves Nicolás Maduro’s political interests, although in this case it seems like they have shot themselves in the foot.
What is evident is that if half of what Maduro says about Ramírez and Ramírez says about Maduro is true, both should be prosecuted for the pillaging that Venezuela has suffered and the serious damage caused to the heritage of all Venezuelans. A confession from one party relieves the other of proof.
Article 271 of the National Constitution establishes that crimes committed against public assets are not subject to statute of limitations.