Emmanuel Andrade and Raul Gorrín
The situation regarding RAUL ANTONIO DE LA SANTISIMA TRINIDAD GORRIN BELISARIO (a.k.a. Raul Gorrín Ced. 8.682.996) was, to be frank, an ongoing issue. The problem in Venezuela is such rampant corruption that it’s nearly impossible to keep track of all the cases. I had heard of Raul Gorrín, but until recently, I had not seen any proof, documents, or evidence of the schemes this crook was involved in.
This changed a few days ago when I received a portion of a file that prosecutor Luisa Ortega Diaz had well-hidden in her office, regarding Raul Gorrín’s financial activities with the Office of the Treasury of Venezuela, also known as Alejandro Andrade and company.
It turns out that Raul Gorrín was one of the preferred financial operators of Alejandro Andrade, who, in his position as the supposed Treasurer of the Nation, carried out a mega scheme with Gorrín. If I understood correctly the documents that Luisa Ortega decided to file away, the mechanism of the Treasury Office was as follows:
Purchase orders for British Treasury Bonds denominated in Pounds Sterling;
The amount in Pounds Sterling was converted to Dollars by the Treasury Office at 1.62 Bolívares per Dollar;
The amount in Dollars was recorded in the Treasury Office’s balances at 4.30 Bolívares per Dollar;
Gorrín sold the Dollars assigned to him by Andrade on the black market, for over 9 Bolívares per Dollar;
Gorrín was supposed to pay the Treasury Office the equivalent in Bolívares of the amount assigned in Dollars;
Gorrín made payments to the Treasury Office through accounts at Banplus and the Banco Industrial de Venezuela.
Let’s take an example:
A bond for 100 million Pounds Sterling converts to 162 million Dollars;
The Treasury Office records in its balance 696,000,000 Bolívares ($1 = 4.30 Bs) that Gorrín has to pay;
The 162 million Dollars assigned to Gorrín are sold on the black market for 9 Bolívares per Dollar;
Gorrín only needed to sell 77 million Dollars (at 9 Bs per Dollar) to recover the 696 million Bolívares he had to pay;
Gorrín keeps the remaining amount, that is, $162,000,000 – $77,000,000 = $85,000,000, and shares it with his buddies.
According to prosecutor documents, Gorrín used shell companies (such as Halifax Group C.A., Comercializadora Servinvest C.A., Inversiones Integrales Totalgroup C.A., Multiset Trade C.A., Grupo Hancock C.A., and Integrados Whymper C.A.) for this corruption scheme.
The Treasury acquired 2,880,000,000 Pounds Sterling in bonds between May 2011 and April 2013. The Prosecutor’s Office estimates that Gorrín would have pocketed 1,450,000,000 Dollars.
Why didn’t Luisa Ortega Diaz investigate this case? Very simple, because she is Gorrín’s partner.
Gorrín is part of a gang called “the dwarfs,” formed by the late Danilo Anderson, Mariano Diaz, Gustavo Perdomo, and others. This gang managed to position itself in the courts, and long before becoming multimillionaires, they sold judicial protection. In other words, anyone with an open court case paid these guys so that cases would be shelved or closed. This is how Gorrín established a relationship with German Ferrer, Luisa Ortega Diaz’s husband, which explains how Ortega Diaz maintains her lifestyle even when abroad.
Through Ferrer, Gorrín protected, for example, the “bolichicos” of Derwick Associates for years. Gorrín also forged strong ties with Maikel Moreno, the crook at the helm of the Supreme Tribunal of Justice, who also acts as a protector of Derwick Associates.
Sources report that Gorrín’s business relationship with the Swiss bank Compagnie Bancaire Helvetique (CBH) was established thanks to his former partner Luis Oberto and the bolichicos from Derwick Associates, all of whom are CBH clients through Joseph Benhamou and Charles Henry de Beaumont.
One of the accounts controlled by @RaulGorrinB at Compagnie Bancaire Helvétique: deposits amounting to 2,914,655,249 dollars… and @lortegadiaz? Counting the commissions… pic.twitter.com/FGM7OmaOPq
— alek boyd (@alekboyd) May 29, 2018
Gorrín not only moved funds through CBH; another well-known Swiss bank, EFG Bank, also participated in the scheme, as well as HSBC, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Citibank, UBS, Bank of China, Wells Fargo, Totalbank Curaçao, BOI Bank (Victor Vargas), Davos Bank (David Osío), CBA Bank & Trust (Aristides Maza Tirado), Banplus (Diego Ricol Freyre), and Banco Industrial de Venezuela. Of course, no bank questioned the origin of the funds Gorrín was transferring. The money from Venezuela’s corruption is well received at every bank.
Among the transfers/payments Gorrín made from CBH, one can find gems like Profit Corporation, one of the companies owned by Samark Lopez, the front man for Tareck el Aissami; payments to Oscar Schemel, Gustavo Arroyo, Karina Rosenberg, Leocenis Garcia, Teresina Giustiniano, Gustavo Suriani Perez, Juan Bravo, etc.
Additionally, there’s evidence of payments to stables, Rontos Racing Stable, or purchases of equestrian items from Dietmar Gugler or Olaf Petersen (presumably to ingratiate himself with Emmanuel Andrade), and transfers to hundreds of companies in Venezuela, Panama, Spain, and the USA… controlled by Gorrín’s clients.
The purchase of Globovisión and Seguros la Vitalicia are minor matters compared to what was done with Andrade in the Treasury. The Banco Industrial de Venezuela, a state institution intervened in 2009, did not raise a single objection. Its director, Rodolfo Porro Aletti, who was previously the head of the intervention board, also saw nothing suspicious. In other words, state institutions, under the absolute control of Chavismo, were profiting massively with Gorrín, and neither the Prosecutor’s Office, the Comptroller’s Office, nor the Attorney General’s Office, nor the supposed champion against corruption did anything at all.