A month ago, the Universidad Central de Venezuela Football Club (UCV-FC) clinched the 2025 Apertura Tournament title in Venezuelan professional football. This victory ended a nearly 70-year title drought, which began in 1957 when they won the first professional championship. Unsurprisingly, they still promote themselves as “the first champion of Venezuela.” While past successes relied on the skills of players, this time military boots played a significant role.
“Celebrate the house that defeats the shadow, 68 years after that first title in the professional era that earned it its only star,” stated the commentator during the official broadcast of the league, right after the final whistle of the match where UCV-FC defeated Deportivo Táchira with a score of 1-0 on June 14 at the Olympic Stadium of the University City of Caracas. Joy erupted among players, coaching staff, and fans.
The football team’s history is indeed tied to the country’s foremost academic institution, which “defeats the shadow.” It was founded in 1950 simultaneously with the construction of the University City, a campus designed by the renowned architect Carlos Raúl Villanueva, which was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 2000.
However, the current UCV-FC has little connection to academia, civility, or freedom of thought—values that the alma mater has represented throughout its 304-year history. The team now embodies its opposite: repression and arbitrariness. It also reflects the blind obedience typical of military hierarchy, which the university’s autonomy has always sought to protect.
On paper, the owner of the team is Yhuryseck Berenice Escalante Ferreira, the wife of National Guard Colonel Alexander Enrique Granko Arteaga, head of the Special Affairs Directorate in Military Counterintelligence and widely recognized as a notorious torturer under Nicolás Maduro’s regime, as evidenced by various reports from international human rights organizations.
As if that weren’t enough, José Alexander Gelvez Monterrey, an active officer of the Military Aviation, also serves as the team’s president. Gelvez, who was recently promoted to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, has been linked, alongside his brother Robert Eduardo Gelvez Monterrey, to an irregularity scheme involving aircraft maintenance contracts awarded by the Major General of Aviation and Commander of Presidential Air Transport, Alejandro José Guevara Hernández.
Documents obtained for this report, along with interviews from internal sources within the club, the Venezuelan Football League (Futve), and the Venezuelan Football Federation (FVF), paint a picture that can be defined as a military takeover of the UCV team.
Hostile Takeover
The timeline of the UCV-FC assault begins on a key date: April 26, 2023.
On that day, Yhuryseck Escalante acquired one third of UCV-FC’s shares from Juan Manuel Useche Oropeza, who had been the sole owner since January 2023, according to documents stored in the Venezuelan Football League. Before Useche Oropeza, the team had been owned by Alfredo Medina Roa since 2020, when UCV-FC returned to the first division after decades in the second division. Until late 2022, the club rented a pitch at the La Guacamaya complex in La Urbina for its training sessions.
In the National Contractors Registry (RNC), as journalist Ibéyise Pacheco mentioned in a column published on June 25 in Diario de las Américas in Miami, it is recorded that Alexander Granko’s wife took over 33% of the shares on April 26, 2023. On the same day, it was noted in a shareholder meeting that José Alexander Gelvez would take on the role of vice president of the club.
Starting in July of that same year, the franchise’s training gear began displaying the logo of the Team Espartanos, a sports promotion platform that Alexander Granko Arteaga has managed since 2021, along with other businesses in sectors like food and drinks as well as scrap metal, where he uses family members like his wife Yhuryseck Escalante as fronts.
The Team Espartanos logo features a Greek-inspired helmet over a field divided into yellow and black, which is the same emblem used by the feared DAE of the Dgcim on its uniforms and vehicles. Since early 2024, it has been permanently printed on all team uniforms. But in February, during the preliminary rounds of the Copa Libertadores and in response to public criticism on social media, the club chose to cover the Team Espartanos logo on their jerseys for the return match against the Brazilian team Corinthians. It was just a temporary cover. On their social media, Team Espartanos did not hide their joy over UCV-FC’s recent championship, celebrating it as their own.
Yhuryseck Escalante’s acquisition of that 33% share package marked the beginning of what ended up being a gradual hostile takeover of the university’s identity.
“We’ve transitioned from being a football club to something military; the change has been obvious,” summarized an employee of the team, who agreed to speak with Armando.info under the condition of anonymity. Among the examples he mentioned to illustrate this transformation was the corporate Christmas gift given to employees last December: a portrait of Hugo Chávez. He also confirmed that Granko Arteaga and other military counterintelligence officials have become regulars at the team’s training sessions, and that the support group that usually cheers the team during home games is largely made up of cadets or young officers from military divisions.
Both the Venezuelan Football League and the federation reinforce this image of the team’s militarization. This is compounded by the fact that the club’s contact with these governing bodies is Lieutenant Colonel José Alexander Gelvez. At the same time, they have not heard from Juan Manuel Useche Oropeza, who theoretically holds the majority stake in the institution.
The employees are also unaware of Useche Oropeza’s whereabouts; he is also the owner of Futsal Park de Los Samanes, which was rebranded in late 2024 as the High-Performance Sports Center (CDAR), where UCV-FC’s first team, as well as its youth and children’s teams, train. Internally, Granko’s wife Yhuryseck Escalante and the Gelvez Monterrey brothers present themselves as the owners of everything.
Granko’s interest in taking over the capital team became evident in 2024, not only due to the military management of the club and the Team Espartanos insignia on their gear. That year, Alexander José Granko Escalante, the teenage son of the colonel, joined the UCV-FC first team at just 16 years old, occasionally even making it into the starting lineup. This precocity speaks less to the emergence of a football phenomenon and more to paternal influence.
Another demonstration of that influence stemmed from an almost anecdotal episode that unexpectedly ended up in the penal courts. During a friendly match in February 2024 between UCV-FC and Deportivo La Guaira—another young team whose rise also dates back to the Maduro era—there was a brawl, one typical of football. The Argentine coaches of La Guaira’s youth team, Andrés Haupt and Gustavo Verón, intervened on the field to stop the fight. However, José Alexander Gelvez, then the university team’s vice president, accused them of igniting it. They were charged with “inciting hatred” and other offenses, resulting in both Argentine coaches spending three months in prison.
In 2024, as the team was nearing a year under Granko-Escalante and Gelvez Monterrey control, UCV authorities felt compelled to issue a statement rejecting the display of political party symbols—particularly an inflatable doll of Superbigote, Nicolás Maduro’s comic hero—during UCV-FC games at the venerable University City. “It is essential to warn that the team in question has no connection with the Universidad Central de Venezuela that justifies its name and the use of institutional symbols, a matter awaiting a legal solution in which the current academic authorities have the greatest interest,” the statement clarified, denouncing the usurpation of the institution’s identity.
More recently, during the final of the Apertura Tournament, UCV-FC’s ability to intimidate its rivals and turn sports grievances into judicial actions was once again underscored. Fans of Deportivo Táchira, who traveled to Caracas to support their traditional and winning team, were detained and taken to El Helicoide, a former shopping center project in western Caracas that the chavismo transformed into a detention center and headquarters for the regime’s political police.
Fraternal Tiquitaca
Following Deportivo Táchira’s definitive defeat, very telling scenes were witnessed on the Olympic Stadium pitch: for instance, UCV’s Panamanian midfielder Alexander Makelele González donned a military tactical operations helmet, like those used by DAE commandos in their terrifying raids against opponents and civilians.
Among the celebrations on the turf, Lieutenant Colonel José Alexander Gelvez Monterrey was seen that night in a combination of a black suit and white shirt, rather than the formal uniform he would wear a few weeks later during another celebration, the official ceremony for military promotions led by Nicolás Maduro at the National Pantheon in Caracas. The resolution 060418 from the Ministry of Defense granted Gelvez the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.
For over a decade, the Gelvez Monterrey brothers competed together in international rally races representing Venezuela. Even today, traces of their participation in competitions in Europe and countries like Mexico can be found in social media and sports press coverage.
Years later, they ventured together into business. Both appear as directors or beneficiaries in companies registered in Hong Kong that profited from contracts awarded by Major General Alejandro José Guevara Hernández for the maintenance of aircraft in Presidential Air Transport Number 4 between 2015 and 2017.
As explained in a story by Armando.info in October 2024, the scheme was as follows: both Maduro’s perennial Minister of Defense, General in Chief Vladimir Padrino López, and Major General Guevara Hernández approved million-dollar contracts through “direct contracting” in favor of businessman Julio César Sequera Rojas and his company, Brio Internacional. Subsequently, funds flowed from Sequera Rojas’ companies into bank accounts in Switzerland belonging to entities registered in Hong Kong, like Pegaso Fly Service Corp Limited or Targareyen Dornier Aeronautics International Services Corp Limited, which had directors or beneficiaries who were relatives of General Guevara Hernández or the Gelvez Monterrey brothers.
Pegaso Fly and Targareyen Dornier, both registered on November 27, 2017, shared the same office address as contractor Sequera Rojas and his Brio Internacional, and had contracts worth thousands of dollars with Presidential Air Transport Number 4 for “pilot training” or “repair of parts and supplies applicable to the Falcon 50 system,” among other ventures.
However, new documents gathered for this report reveal that the business’s scale was even larger. On March 15, 2018, for example, the National Development Fund (Fonden) made a payment of just under two million euros to Targareyen Dornier, in which Robert Eduardo Gelvez is the final beneficiary, related to invoices for various services rendered to the Presidential Air Transport Number 4. Four days later, on March 19, 2018, a similar transaction for nearly 2.1 million euros was made to the company’s account in C.I.M. Banque in Switzerland.
José Alexander Gelvez is also an executive and shareholder of another Hong Kong company, Argos International Equipment And Service Limited, registered on May 23, 2018. A source familiar with the Gelvez businesses, who asked reporters not to reveal their identity, claimed that this company also participated in the scheme for aircraft maintenance and services for Presidential Air Transport Number 4.
Robert Eduardo Gelvez, who serves as the sports director at UCV-FC, also registered a company in France on October 5, 2017, under the name Systemes De L’Arepostale Et De La’Aviation.
The relationship between José Alexander Gelvez and Alexander Granko dates back to that time of business involving the maintenance of aircraft in Presidential Air Transport Number 4, as this unit is part of the Presidential Honor Guard. In several official delegations where Nicolás Maduro Guerra, son of Nicolás Maduro, has traveled, Gelvez has participated as a “technician” and “maintenance operator” on these trips. “He usually goes on these trips as he’s a technical officer and sometimes acts as security for the Air Transport Group,” a military source says.
The Honor Guard was commanded by Major General Iván Hernández Dala, who eventually also headed military counterintelligence from September 2015 to October 14, 2024. On that last date, Maduro removed him from his position at the Dgcim, where he was Granko Arteaga’s superior.
One day after Hernández Dala’s dismissal on October 15, 2024, the Team Espartanos social media thanked the major general “for his effort and dedication and for being a bastion for our team.”
Since November last year, Iván Hernández Dala has presided over the state telecommunications company Cantv, and in this capacity, he had the opportunity to return the favor: the company became one of UCV-FC’s state sponsors, alongside the state oil company Pdvsa, Bolivariana de Puertos (Bolipuertos), and the Venezuelan Corporation of Guayana (CVG), among others. Fair is fair.
