U.S.
Venezuelans are leading investors in Florida’s real estate market. Eleven former Pdvsa officials, high-profile contractors of chavismo, individuals indicted by U.S. justice, and even a relative of President Maduro listed in the Clinton list, have made over 60 million dollars in property purchases.
Opening the door to apartment 45C in the One57 building on 57th Street leads to one of the most luxurious and expensive apartments in Manhattan. Surrounded by floor-to-ceiling windows, the 45C offers breathtaking views of the Big Apple from any room: Central Park, the Hudson River, and beyond, the city skyline. Each space in this corner has something that elevates its status: Italian marble, granite, openings that appear to be works of art, a private bathroom for each of the four bedrooms, and a kitchen equipped with state-of-the-art appliances. The owner is María Lila Rincón, wife of Roberto Enrique Rincón Fernández, the Venezuelan businessman who pleaded guilty in 2015 to money laundering and diverting over 1 billion dollars from the state oil corporation Petróleos de Venezuela (Pdvsa), in one of the largest corruption cases in the country.
Valued at 17 million dollars, this apartment is located in one of the most expensive square meter areas on the island. The area is known as Billionaire Row, famous for its concentration of wealth displayed in a group of eight residential skyscrapers. One57, where Rincón’s wife’s unit is situated, opened in 2014. The structure was designed by acclaimed French architect Christian de Portzamparc, and its interiors by his Danish colleague Thomas Jull-Hansen, also a global professional. Many of the apartments in the area were purchased as real estate investments by wealthy individuals and are currently on the market, including María Lila Rincón’s.
This is how a real estate company promotes the building where María Lila Rincón has an apartment.
However, this property is not María Lila Rincón’s only asset in the United States: the family owns at least two more apartments in Brickell, the financial heart of Miami. The properties combined are worth around 19 million dollars and are part of the findings from a journalistic investigation that tracked the properties of 11 Venezuelans in the U.S., reflecting the scale of operations by individuals of interest in that country.
The list includes relatives of top government officials—such as the wife of Carlos Erick Malpica, who was the national treasurer and head of finances for the state oil company and is a nephew of Cilia Flores, Nicolás Maduro’s partner; former Pdvsa officials—like Alfonzo Gravina and Karina Núñez, linked to Rincón’s scheme; and high-profile chavismo contractors and members of their family or business circles—such as Naman Wakil, Ricardo Morón, Morela Hernández de Morón, María Lila and José Roberto Rincón, Atahualpa Fernández Arbulu, Franz Muller, and Amir Nassar Tayupe. Of the 11 individuals tracked, four have been indicted by U.S. authorities and one is included among the more than 200 individuals close to chavismo on the Clinton list created by the Treasury Department.
Chavismo INC. identified 33 properties associated with these individuals, ranging in price from 220 thousand dollars to luxury properties exceeding 17 million dollars, collectively amounting to over 60 million dollars. The properties were purchased between 2006 and 2019 in the U.S., one of the top destinations for those looking to invest in real estate and remain under the radar. All tracked properties for this research are located in Florida—mainly in the Brickell neighborhood—except for two in Texas and New York. Most are registered under companies that do not show any commercial activities, except for owning the property. Others are under the names of spouses, partners, and relatives, and in some cases, were bought to be sold at a loss just a few months later.
According to the National Association of Realtors, Venezuelans have ranked among the top Latin Americans purchasing properties in the U.S. since 2003, making it one of their favored migration destinations. While most made legal transactions in the real estate market, others have attracted the attention of local authorities leading the fight against corruption originating from Venezuela. In southern Florida alone, which has drawn the bulk of the migration, properties worth over 450 million dollars have been seized, some of which were properties. To date, 38 investigations and lawsuits have been initiated in the U.S. involving more than 100 individuals, evidencing the embezzlement of the Venezuelan state amounting to over 16.049 billion dollars, according to Chavismo INC.
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None of this has deterred Venezuelans connected to chavista power, who nonetheless invested in properties. This is legitimate: anyone can buy a house wherever they want, but at some point, they must prove where the money comes from that allows them to do so. Chavismo INC. only shares the acquisitions, relationships, and other interactions that can offer some insight into the wealth and reach of a list of individuals of interest around the world.
The information was obtained by tracking, among other documents, legal cases, company records, and the wealth of individuals linked to chavismo in 69 countries, which formed the basis of a database. This transnational research initiative by Transparency Venezuela partnered with the Latin American journalism platform CONNECTAS and Alianza Rebelde Investiga (ARI), involving journalists and researchers from Venezuela, Argentina, Panama, Spain, the United States, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Uruguay, and Bolivia.
LLC Ownerships
The apartment 45C in the One57 building on 57th Street, one of the most luxurious and expensive in Manhattan, is registered under the company Unit 45c Holding LLC, which is based in Texas. This property is currently for sale—“One57 is where a luxurious life awaits you,” reads the advertisement—for 16 million dollars. It was purchased in March 2015 for 17.3 million dollars paid in cash, according to property records accessed by Chavismo INC. The company shares an address with several owned by Roberto Rincón in Texas and is managed by Maria Lila Rincón.
A group of 25 properties identified in this investigation were acquired by companies linked to the individuals of interest. This group includes María Lila Rincón herself and her luxury apartment in Manhattan; the impressive house reserved for the former Pdvsa purchasing analyst Karina Núñez; and those of contractors Ricardo Morón, Morela Hernández de Morón, Atahualpa Fernández Arbulu, Amir Nassar Tayupe, Naman Wakil, and Diego Villarroel Atela.
U.S. legislation allows buyers to use companies that are not required to have economic activity, making it easier to hide assets: in many cases, it’s nearly impossible to know for certain the source of money behind such companies, as buyers can register shell companies under the names of accountants, lawyers, or relatives. Chavismo INC. shows this is a common and widely used practice in other jurisdictions, like Panama. Sometimes purchases are made by groups of investors, further obscuring the origin of the funds. To complicate matters, the management of any company can change without needing to be reported in property records. For this reason, many choose this method for risk and secrecy reasons.
In María Lila Rincón’s case, the use of companies for property purchases extends beyond her New York apartment: she owns at least two properties located in the same building in Brickell, Miami’s financial center. Both are registered under companies controlled by Rincón, and a common factor among the three properties is their registered agent.
These real estate purchases were made despite being under the radar of the U.S. Department of Justice, which suspects that Maria Lila Rincón Bravo and her son, José Roberto Rincón Bravo, were part of a group that collaborated with mogul Roberto Rincón, both husband and father, in the corruption scheme to which he pleaded guilty. While they have not been charged with any crime, the Department of Justice’s suspicion was documented in court documents.
But it wasn’t only U.S. justice trailing the Rincón-Bravos. In June 2018, Spanish authorities arrested José Roberto Rincón Bravo and his mother, Maria Lila Rincón, at a estate outside Madrid—see here—. Their arrest revealed the luxurious lifestyle of the businessman’s family. The Spanish National Police’s Economic and Fiscal Crime Unit (UDEF) and the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office seized high-end vehicles, artwork, wines, and jewelry. The UDEF needed 17 pages to detail all the seized jewelry, valued by authorities at 12 million euros, although the Spanish newspaper El Confidencial estimates that the commercial value could triple. Maria Lila Rincón and her son await trial in freedom. Their lawyers were sent a questionnaire regarding the issues raised in this investigation but did not respond.
The Perks of Cash
Purchasing properties through companies and paying in cash has made the real estate market, particularly the high-end sector, increasingly less transparent and more attractive for those wishing to hide assets within the United States. Data analyzed by the New York Times reveals that in recent years, nearly half of residential purchases exceeding 5 million dollars were made by shell companies.
Another case of property acquisition via firms is Luxe Investments Corp., registered in Florida under Diego Alejandro Villarroel Atella’s name. This company owns a house valued at nearly 3 million dollars, located in the Pinecrest neighborhood of Miami. Who is the real owner? Diego Alejandro Villarroel Atella, a young Venezuelan, partner of Luis David Chacín Imbrondone, the son of businessman and contractor Luis Chacín Haddad, condemned in the U.S. to four years in prison for corruption connected with the National Electric Corporation (Corpoelec). On his Facebook profile, Villarroel showcases a meteoric career: from selling cellphones and televisions in 2014, to trading dollars, cement, and steel in 2017, to becoming a contractor for Corpoelec in 2019.
Villarroel and Chacín Imbrondone are partners in Guangzhou Ballac Trading Limited C.A., a company registered in the National Contractors Registry (RNC) in Venezuela. According to its website, it offers demolition, recovery, storage, transportation, recycling, and container services. Villarroel also owns a similarly named company, Guangzhou Ballac Trading Limited, LLC, registered in Florida, which, according to import data from Import Genius, supplied two LMF-type compressors to Corpoelec in July 2019. The import information reveals that Guangzhou Ballac Trading Limited LLC acted as an intermediary between the manufacturing company, LMF, and Corpoelec. Villarroel was contacted by Chavismo INC. but did not respond to the questionnaire sent.
In addition to operations like Villaroel’s, acquiring properties through companies, Chavismo INC. highlights the purchase of real estate through family members and partners. This list includes Naman Wakil, a former street vendor linked to the food sector in Venezuela, who owns properties under companies, under his own name, and his wife’s. Wakil fits into all the identified patterns of purchasing properties in the U.S. In Venezuela, he is known for his connections to the brothers-in-law of former food ministry Carlos Osorio, a Venezuelan Army general who controlled food imports for several years, and for the ability to secure contracts with the Venezuelan state due to this relationship. It was precisely in this field that Wakil amassed his fortune: purchasing cheap beef and poultry in Brazil, sometimes near their expiration date, and selling them to state feeding programs.
A Bloomberg report published in 2019 revealed that Wakil instructed his Swiss bankers to transfer 5.9 million dollars to relatives of Carlos Osorio as payment for awarding him contracts for meat sales. Both Wakil and the beneficiaries used accounts at Compagnie Bancaire Helvetique S.A. (CBH), headquartered in Geneva.
The American media’s investigation states that in June 2012, Wakil obtained a contract to supply Venezuela with about 70,000 metric tons of beef, pasta, and cooking oil. By 2015, his personal fortune had reached 400 million dollars, as revealed in the global investigation Panama Papers.
About 19 million dollars of that fortune are distributed across 13 properties in Florida. Of them, eight are registered under companies, while five are owned by Wakil and his wife, Ingrid Maria Sayegh Sakka; two are in the same building: 951 Brickell Ave. in Miami. There’s an interesting detail in the transaction of those apartments: they were bought from Atahualpa Fernández Arbulu, a businessman closely connected to the Venezuelan military, textiles, and bottled water. Wakil and Fernández also owned apartments in the controversial Porsche Design Tower in Miami, a luxurious 60-story skyscraper with car elevators, where other Venezuelans linked to cases reviewed by U.S. justice also had properties. Chavismo INC. contacted Wakil for comments on these activities, but no response was received.