Nasar Ramadan Dagga Mujamad is a Venezuelan businessman, born in Carabobo state on July 9, 1976. He serves as the CEO of CLX Samsung, Gad Technology, XIO, and Aiwa Venezuela; representing Samsung, LG Corporation, Xiaomi Corporation, and Aiwa in Venezuela, respectively. He is also the president of the Multimax store chain.
Of Arabic descent, he graduated from the Centro de Estudio Carabobo Educational Unit and studied Law at the “Santiago Mariño” Polytechnic University Institute.
For a decade, he worked as Sales Manager at the electronics store “La Linda,” located in Morón, Carabobo.
In 2004, he took over the marketing department at Cyberlux of Venezuela, which represented Philco, Hoover, and Hyundai. He developed Cyberlux and Frigilux as proprietary brands with assembly lines in Venezuela, utilizing products imported from China and Brazil.
In 2013, he founded Consorcio LUX C.A, with subsidiaries in the USA and Panama, tasked with distributing Samsung products throughout Latin America.
In August of the same year, he established the first CLX Samsung store for the Venezuelan market. He currently operates twelve stores in Venezuela and one in Panama.
In June 2018, he founded LG Gad Technology, authorized as a representative of LG Corporation in Venezuela, and opened a second and third LG store.
In January 2019, CLX Samsung attended CES in Las Vegas for the third time; in June 2019, Dagga opened a new CLX store in Barinas, and by the end of that year, he introduced the first official Xiaomi store in Venezuela, which grew to five stores by March 2021.
In October 2019, the Multimax store was opened in Valencia, Carabobo, which now has seven stores nationwide, with Dagga as part of its board of directors.
Nasar Dagga has been a part of the Magallanes Foundation, executing various programs both during and outside the baseball season.
In the cultural arena, he sponsored the film project “Muerte Suspendida” by director Oscar Rivas Gamboa, based on real events.
Nasar Ramadan Dagga Mujamad also organizes corporate parties for his employees and gifts them cell phones.
Enchufado
The distributor was registered in January 2004 in Carabobo State, receiving an extraordinary amount despite Nasar Ramadan’s declared capital of only 100 million bolívares, as noted in Venezuela’s National Contractor Registry.
In this registry, which is necessary for negotiating with any state entity; Daka appears as a supplier for PDVSA, the Venezuelan oil company.
Daka (or Cyberlux of Venezuela) is owned by Manzur Ramadan Dagga Mujamad (known as Falles Ramadan) and his brother Fauci Mahmoud Daggak Mujamad.
Each declares ownership of 50% of the shares and serves as president and vice president, respectively.
Nasar Ramadan Dagga Mujamad and Yaser Ramadan Dagga Mujamad are also part of the company’s board, holding positions as administrators.
The chain bases its commercial strategy on advertising campaigns with public figures and television hosts, such as Adrian Barros, a news anchor from Televen.
It’s no coincidence that DAKA and CLX Samsung are registered in Carabobo State. Falles Ramadan and Nasar Ramadan are said to be friends and partners of Rafael Lacava, the governor of Carabobo State.
Daka and Currency “Guisos”
The president of Venezuela himself was determined in 2014 to expose these appliance stores as a showcase of capitalist usury and urged to raid them so that “nothing remains on their shelves.” The so-called “Dakazo” led to the extinction of an entire retail sector. Interestingly, the original sinner not only survived the competition but even the authorities that sanctioned him at that time. The very state that treated him with contempt continued to reward the business group behind Daka with access to preferential foreign currency, reported Armando.info.
Behind the appliance business in Venezuela, one surname is repeatedly mentioned: Dagga. This name identifies the Palestinian-origin business group that surged during the oil boom and the currency control implemented by chavismo over more than a decade. Even the Dakazo incident has not halted their expansion. Because, yes, Dagga is the name behind the Daka store chain, infamous in Venezuela, more for the order to empty it issued by president Nicolás Maduro in 2013 than for their advertising efforts. The nation’s first president accused it of usury and speculation. That order for occupation and confiscation obliterated much of the retail electronics market in the country within weeks, potentially influencing the results of the municipal elections a month later. Strangely, it did not leave the Dagga family unscathed. Today, their empire includes not just Daka but other enterprises as well.
Nasar Ramadan Dagga Mujamad and Manzur Ramadan Dagga Mujamad are linked to the origins of Daka de Venezuela C.A. The former is also connected to Consorcio Lux and the CLX stores, founded in 2013 and with an “exclusive license” for the “representation and distribution” of South Korean brand Samsung, while the latter is connected to Bullpro Maracay C.A, established in 2016 and dedicated to marketing sound equipment from the American brand Boss. Additionally, Yaser Arafat Dagga Muhd, also a founding partner of CLX stores, is the sole owner of Cyberlux of Venezuela C.A., promoted as the “largest appliance assembler in Venezuela,” and was associated with Daka de Venezuela C.A. Similar connections between the origins of Daka’s business and other companies are mirrored in several of the companies that the entrepreneurs and their relatives have registered in Panama.
Despite this, the group maintains that “the only link that exists is familial” and that it is “very sensitive information.” One thing is clear: business continues to thrive, even Daka, in what seems like a little-known plot.
“We are open,” read the sign hanging on the façade of Daka’s branch in Maracay, the capital of Aragua state, central Venezuela. The secrecy surrounding the event and the uproar of another piece of news from Aragua that day, where a criminal court agreed to annul the process leading to the referendum against the president, overshadowed the inauguration of Daka’s sixth store. Still, the message was clear: the storm unleashed in 2013 is in the past.
“I have immediately ordered the occupation of that network and to sell the products to the people at fair prices, all products, so nothing remains on the shelves, nothing in the warehouses, that’s enough,” Maduro roared through television screens on Friday, November 8, 2013. Chaos followed his words: the Daka branch in Valencia, which had been consumed by a fire in 2011, was looted the next day. A few weeks of inspections by authorities followed at stores nationwide, requiring owners to reduce their merchandise prices. Many of those inspections were broadcast nationwide, not only selling off merchants’ inventories but also their reputations. Some never reopened their businesses. There were scuffles. The government’s popularity improved, enough to win the municipal elections on December 8, 2013, and the term Dakazo was born to refer to that attempt to curb inflation by mandate.
“This marketing network is given dollars from Cadivi and Sicad so that what they can’t find here is supplemented with imports. Do you all know the markup percentage we see on refrigerators, air conditioners, televisions, washing machines, and family-use household appliances? Well, I can tell you: the average markup, theft, reaches 1,000% of product prices,” argued the individual who had been in office for only seven months as Hugo Chávez’s successor.
The head of the Highest Body for the Defense of the Economy and Minister of Aquatic and Aerial Transport, Hebert García Plaza, labeled Daka as an “enemy” of the people. “We have reported to the Public Ministry the alleged commission of usury by the owners of Daka, both in Boleíta and Bello Monte, so that appropriate legal actions can be taken… Let me tell the Venezuelan people what their true enemy is: here we have one, in Bello Monte we have another, you already mentioned it in Punto Fijo (location of another store), in Punto Fijo it’s the most significant abomination we can inform the Venezuelan people,” expressed one of the protagonists of those days, who is now labeled a “traitor” within the revolutionary ranks and accused of corruption and even plotting a coup against the government.
Institutions responsible for oversight during those days, like the Highest Body for the Defense of the Economy, the National Superintendence of Costs and Prices (Sundecop), or the Institute for the Defense of People’s Access to Goods (Indepabis), also no longer exist, 36 months later. Daka has survived them all.
The record of Daka de Venezuela C.A in the National Contractors Registry (RNC) reveals that the executives who established the company on January 26, 2004, in the third commercial registry of Carabobo state are: Dagga Mujamad Nasar Ramadan, Daggak Mujamad Nacer, Dagga Mujamad Manzur, and Daggak Mujamad Fauci Mahmoud. Some time after its founding, Daka de Venezuela became Cyberlux of Venezuela C.A, currently owned by Yaser Arafat Dagga. The government became aware of this in 2013.
“We have been tracking the dollars that are distributed, the Certificates of Non-Production (CNP) that are approved, and what enters through customs. We match the official records we have; the names of this company coincide with the owners of Daka, their names match, employees indicate that there is a dissolution from the perspective of the company, that there’s no commercial relationship, well the CNPs that have been submitted until last year and from some records coincide with those names,” assured Ricardo Menéndez during an inspection of Cyberlux in the midst of the Dakazo, back then Minister of Industries.
There are even more faces and legal entities behind the Daka business. “Grupo Daka started on Bolívar Avenue in Punto Fijo in 1999 under the commercial name Mundo Daka, C.A, and later in 2006 opened under the corporate name DKZL, C.A, moving to a larger exhibiting store located in the Duty Free Tourist and Commercial Investment Zone of Paraguaná,” states ruling 226 from the Supreme Tribunal of Justice’s Penal Chamber, dated June 16, 2016, signed by magistrate Maikel Moreno, urging the Public Ministry to present the “conclusive act” of the investigation as soon as possible and to “accumulate” in a Caracas court the cases opened in Carabobo and Falcón against the owners of Daka.
This document and the judicial files only hold Mahmoud Daggak, Falles Ramadan Daggak Mujamad and his spouse Hasan Abdilhadi Amal, shareholders of companies such as Mundo Daka C.A., DKZL C.A., the legal entity for the Paraguaná Free Zone branch, or DK Valencia, the legal entity for the Valencia store, or DK Caracas C.A for the Bello Monte location in the Venezuelan capital, responsible for “aggravated usury” and “association to commit crimes.”
It was against these companies that the Ministry of Commerce issued the measure of “temporary occupation” on November 25, 2013, published in Official Gazette 40.301. “It is ordered that the Institute for the Defense of People’s Access to Goods and Services implement a preventive measure of temporary occupation and operational capacity for the companies listed below: DKZL, DK Lara, DK Caracas, DK Boleita, and DKVAL.” Colonel Hermes Josues Carreño Escobar, brother of the military and current deputy of Psuv, Pedro Carreño Escobar, was commissioned as director of the Decentralized Service of Goods and Services of the Bolivarian National Armed Forces to administer Daka “during the temporary occupation and operational measure.”
The dance of identities and companies confused the authorities themselves. Eduardo Samán, former president of the Institute for the Defense of People’s Access to Goods (Indepabis), stated that “Daka stores do not receive dollars from the Commission of Administration of Foreign Currency (Cadivi) and purchase their products from local distributors,” according to the state-run newspaper Correo del Orinoco on November 8, 2013. Meanwhile, Minister of Interior and Justice at the time, Major General Miguel Rodríguez Torres, untangled the web surrounding Daka.
“They create a number of companies under different names, which are the ones requesting foreign currency from Cadivi, importing the appliances, and then selling them to Daka… They are not truly a business, just a name, a shell company that imports, Daka buys from them under another name at exorbitant prices justifying the appliance prices,” Rodríguez Torres denounced on November 10, 2013, according to media reports.