Indicment Raul Gorrin - Venezuelan Mediam President - Globovision

Here is the indictment against Raul Gorrin y Perdomo - 18 pages - and people involucred:

- Raul Gorrin Belisario - Citizen of Venezuela, Coral Gables
- Foreign Official 1: Alejandro Andrade - between 2007 - 2010 - Alejandro Andrade
- Foreign Official 2: Claudia Diaz - Hugo Chavez nurse
- Co-Conspirater: Adrian Velasquez - Claudia Diaz's husband
- Foreign Bank Official: Gabriel Jimenez Aray - Banquero Venezolano - Banco Peravia

Here the indictment - Link

Raul Gordin Belisario

Alejandro Andrade

Raul Gorrin Properties

Venezuela is not longer a democracy

http://www.buenosairesherald.com/article/220426/oas-chief-almagro-%E2%80%98venezuela-is-no-longer-a-democracy%E2%80%99
WASHINGTON — The head of the Organization of American States (OAS), Luis Almagro, openly denounced corruption and violence in Venezuela yesterday, saying a 14-year prison term for an opposition leader there marked the “end of democracy” in the country.
In an eight-page open letter to hardline Popular Will leader Leopoldo López, Almagro criticized Venezuela’s climate of “intimidation.”
The OAS chief also denounced threats against those working to recall left-wing President Nicolás Maduro.
“No regional or subregional forum can ignore the reality that today in Venezuela there is no democracy or rule of law,” Almagro said, calling López a “friend.”
“Under no circumstances should power be used... to prevent the sovereign will of the people from being expressed.”
The former Uruguayan foreign minister said Venezuelans are a “victim of bullying.”
The Venezuelan government “seeks to maintain its power and deny the people the right to make decisions through voting, by resorting to violence against those who demonstrate or hold other opinions,” Almagro said.
“It has crossed a line, which means it is the end of democracy.”
On August 12, Venezuela’s court of appeals upheld a 14-year sentence for López that was handed down after a closed-door trial. The sentence was strongly condemned by the European Union, the United Nations and the United States.
López, one of Maduro’s most hardline opponents whose stance has excacerbated divisions among the opposition coalition, had repeatedly declared himself innocent of the crime for which he was convicted — inciting violence at anti-government protests in 2014 that left 43 dead.
Venezuela, home to the world’s largest oil reserves, is gripped by recession that has contributed to severe shortages of food, medicine and basic goods that have triggered violence and looting.
Maduro blames the recession on wealthy business magnates and “imperialist foes” he says are conspiring against his government.
The opposition is racing to force a referendum to recall Maduro from office, blaming him for the crisis and mishandling the state-led economy.
According to the Constitution, a successful recall vote this year would trigger a presidential election that the opposition would likely win. But an opposition victory in a recall referendum next year would result only in Vice-President Aristóbulo Istúriz — a Socialist Party stalwart — replacing Maduro until his term ends in early 2019.
Election officials already stretched out the first phase of the recall effort — verifying submitted signatures from one percent of voters to authorize the second petition drive — into a months-long ordeal.
The government has been accused of dragging its feet while stopping short of actually denying the recall effort.
Earlier this month, 15 members of the OAS called on Venezuela to act “without delay” to clear the way for the election.
Almagro recently branded Maduro a “petty dictator” and in an ongoing war of words said Venezuela had suffered an “alteration of constitutional order” and called for OAS members to invoke Article 20 of the Inter-American Democratic Charter to suspend the country from the bloc, the issue remains under review.

US targets Andorra bank with laundering PdV funds

US targets Andorra bank with laundering PdV funds

11 Mar 2015, 5.18 pm GMT

Caracas, 11 March (Argus) — The US Treasury Department yesterday charged an Andorra-based bank of laundering around $2bn siphoned off of Venezuela´s state-owned oil company PdV.

The accusation by the department´s financial crimes enforcement network (FinCEN) that a senior manager at Banca Privada d'Andorra (BPA) laundered the funds comes amid a wider escalation of tension between Washington and Caracas.

The Venezuelan foreign ministry and PdV have not commented on the accusation.

FinCen named BPA "a foreign financial institution of primary money laundering concern" under the US Patriot Act "based on information indicating that, for several years, high-level managers at BPA have knowingly facilitated transactions on behalf of third–party money launderers acting on behalf of transnational criminal organizations."

FinCEN also accused the bank of laundering money for Russian and Chinese organized crime groups.

The money-laundering charge followed the 9 March issuance of a US executive order that implements and expands US sanctions on senior Venezuelan government officials for human rights violations and corruption.

The sanctions revoke the US visas of the officials and freeze their US assets. Around 60 Venezuelan officials have been targeted under the sanctions.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro swiftly lambasted the new order, and named two of seven targeted officials as cabinet ministers. Caracas has also imposed a new visa requirement for US citizens visiting Venezuela, and ordered the curtailment of US diplomatic staff.

Some US companies with technical service contracts with PdV are pulling US employees out of Venezuela until the visa rules are clarified.

The National Andorran Finance Institute (INAF), the Spanish government entity that oversees the financial sector in Andorra, yesterday intervened on behalf of BPA and its subsidiary Banco de Madrid to guarantee operations.

In one of his now-nightly television broadcasts, Maduro yesterday requested that the national assembly grant him special powers, hinting that he may use them to suspend constitutional guarantees.

The assembly, which is controlled by the ruling PSUV party, is likely to grant the special powers today.

Venezuela´s oil-based economy is expected to contract by 7pc in 2015. Annual inflation is approaching triple digits, and shortages of basic goods are widespread.

Venezuela exported 680,000 b/d to the US in December 2014, down from 852,000 b/d in July 2014, according to most recent data from the US Energy Information Administration.

Venezuela is the third country with highest deposits in Swiss HSBC bank

Venezuela is the third country with highest deposits in Swiss HSBC bank

Venezuela's Banco del Tesoro and the Treasury Office top the list of Venezuelan depositors

Venezuela is below Switzerland and England, among other countries, with a capital exceeding USD 14 billion in deposits 

EL UNIVERSAL

Tuesday February 10, 2015  10:08 AM

According to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), Venezuela ranks third among the countries with higher deposits in dollars in HSBC bank accounts in Switzerland.

"The government deposited between 2006 and 2007, over USD 12 billion in the HSBC branch in Geneva, Switzerland's business capital," revealed the ICIJ.

Venezuela is below Switzerland itself and England, among other countries, with a capital exceeding USD 14 billion in deposits. Venezuelan public sector accounts represent 85% of total Venezuelan deposits.

The details were provided by whistleblower Hervé Falciani, a former HSBC employee.

Most Venezuelan funds belong to the Banco del Tesoro, represented by Minister of Public Banking, Rodolfo Marco Torres, and Alejandro Andrade, who was National Treasurer from 2007-2010. Andrade was also president of the Economic and Social Development Bank of Venezuela (Bandes) from 2008-2010.

The Venezuelan Treasury Office also holds funds in the HSBC.

Venezuelan complaining about shortages...

Why Venezuelan Protest?

Venezuelan Revolution at Full Throttle

From the Editors of VenEconomy

If you thought things in Venezuela could not get any worse, you must be realizing by now how wrong you were.
Over the past few weeks, the country’s political situation, social environment and morals of citizens have been sinking into what it seems a bottomless pit at the same pace as the economy has been deteriorating.
On Tuesday, for instance, the National Assembly (namely, the Congress) is getting ready to withdraw the parliamentary immunity from María Mercedes Aranguren, a lawmaker from the Venezuelan opposition, as requested by the Supreme Court (TSJ), which is looking to bring her to trial for “alleged corruption, money laundering and criminal association as prescribed by the Organic Law against Organized Crime.” This is an accusation needed by the Government so it can pull a parliamentary majority required to grant special powers to President Nicolás Maduro so he can deepen a communist process in Venezuela.
One of the main aspects of this move is that the Government is requesting these special powers to fight “corruption and an ongoing economic war” and will turn to bribery to the end of “buying” the much-needed “lawmaker 99” that would buy the missing vote to pass this decree. This “lawmaker 99” will carry over his/her shoulders the fact of handing over the future of the country to a ruler who has no boundaries in curtailing the constitutional rights of Venezuelans, as long as he follows the Castro recipe to dominate the entire nation.
The truth is Maduro does not need this enabling law to fight the corruption that has taken hold during the revolutionary government. If he wanted to fight corruption, it would only take to apply existing laws and let the public powers do their thing without any political hues. But at present there is no autonomous moral power, or judiciary power or even a legislative power to hold the Executive accountable for looting the public purse and squandering the resources belonging to the population.
Neither does Maduro require special powers to fight a fictional economic war that he made up himself. There are countless existing laws, controls and ruling and inspection bodies that are capable of controlling, taking remedial actions and sanctioning those acting above the law in their entrepreneurial, business and personal activities.
The reality is that Maduro is requesting an enabling law so he can have a blank check that allows him to deepen the communist project started by the late Hugo Chávez in Venezuela. He wants to have a free path so he can finish destroying the country’s private sector and have total control over the productive sector from beginning to end and with no accountability whatsoever.
The events over the weekend, in which on a national TV and radio broadcast the ruler demanded to see empty shelves at major home appliances stores across the country that were subject to inspections after alleged usury, may be unleashing demons hard to contain in a country that has been tolerating economic and social limitations for quite some time. Today, several stores have been looted by some wild hordes of people, who Diosdado Cabello (the head of the National Assembly) calls a “popular organization.” Other retail stores have opted to close their doors in the event of a “mishap,” as some locals call the act of looting nowadays. Some 28 owners and managers from those retail stores have been detained by authorities; the Public Ministry has issued some 10 arrest warrants and has “temporarily” taken over three establishments.
It is quite worrisome the announcement of the creation of a special prosecuting office aimed at fighting usury, which seems to lead to the execution of summary trials, without right to defense or presumption of innocence. Who is going to invest amid this chaos? If the Government keeps moving forward with its plan, it will be worthless if it prohibits the people to talk about the shortages, lootings, inflation, unofficial dollar rates or just about any subject that has already been banned by the Government.
It is quite worrisome that when controlled sales finish off the inventories of inspected retailers, irate people may want to go there again for more.
It is worrisome as well that Maduro is calling the “Popular Power” and militias to step out into the streets to provide support to “civil, military and police authorities.” Making brothers fight against each other has always been a recipe that never has tasted any good.VenEconomy has been a leading provider of consultancy on financial, political and economic data in Venezuela since 1982.

How Rafael Ramirez bankrupted Petroleos de Venezuela

I like this information, but I am so glad we are not producing 5 MBD, because the politicias would have had more money to steal.
vdebate
How Rafael Ramirez bankrupted Petroleos de Venezuela?
Gustavo Coronel
http://infodio.com/190913/rafael/ramirez/bankrupt/pdvsa
19/09/2013

Rafael Ramirez is the Minister of Energy and Petroleum of Venezuela.

For the past 11 years he has also been the President of the state-owned petroleum company, Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA). I would like to describe in this article how he led the company into bankruptcy. In so doing he has also generated economic and social chaos in the country, since petroleum is the only source of foreign currency for our nation. It represents 96% of all Venezuelan exports.  Bankruptcy is essentially a financial term, but it can also be applied to the operational, organizational and ethical aspects of a corporation. I argue that PDVSA is bankrupt in every one of these aspects. I will use the official data provided by the company in its Annual Report for 2012 to support this assertion.  

1. OPERATIONAL BANKRUPTCY 

(a) PDVSA currently produces about 2.5 million barrels of oil per day. The official production figure is 2.9 million barrels per day, which includes the production of the foreign partners in the Orinoco area, about 0.4 million barrels per day (BPD). PDVSA’s production, therefore, is about half a million barrels of oil per day less than in 1998. In 15 years the company has not only failed to increase production, but has lost production capability. Previous management had left a plan in place to increase oil production to 5 million barrels per day in 2012. This plan was abandoned by Ramirez. Therefore, PDVSA is now producing half of what it should have been producing, if the plan had been executed.The loss to the nation is enormous. 

(b) The huge heavy-oil deposits of the Orinoco area have not been developed. Upgrading plants that are essential to convert these heavy oils into a commercial product have not been built. Instead, the area has been divided into blocks, mostly given to state-owned companies from ideologically friendly countries -Vietnam, Cuba, Russia, China, and Belarus- that lack the technical, managerial or even financial capability to develop these deposits. International private companies have been largely excluded and two of them, ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips, have resorted to legal actions against the expropriation of their assets. 

(c) The traditional oilfields of light and medium gravity oil are in great neglect and, as a result, the Venezuelan composite basket has lost much value in the international markets. No light oil deposits have been discovered in the last 15 years due to lack of exploration. Only two exploration wells were completed in 2012, compared to about 200 in Brazil. 

(d) The refineries are now operating at some 70 percent of design capacity, while the index of industrial accidents is 10 times greater than the international averages (link). The explosion of the Amuay refinery in August 2012 has been the worst tragedy, but not the only one that has afflicted the installations of the company, due to lack of proper maintenance. 

(e) The deficit of natural gas is increasing, while In Anaco, Eastern Venezuela, there are up to 22 trillion cubic feet of gas reserves undeveloped due to the ineptitude of the company (link). Offshore deposits have not been produced because foreign partners, ENI and REPSOL find it undesirable to invest in development to sell the gas at subsidized prices in the domestic market. Natural gas continues being imported from Colombia. 

 2. ORGANIZATIONAL BANKRUPTCY 

(a) PDVSA is no longer an oil company, much less an energy company. It is a multipurpose company that has been ordered by the central government to engage in the most diverse activities, e.g: food imports and distribution, building houses, raising pigs, planting cassava and ideologically indoctrinating its employees against capitalism. It has created dozens of affiliates that spend millions of dollars doing tasks unrelated to its core business. This has led to organizational chaos and to much corruption. In this type of organizational environment no company can be efficient. 

(b) The president of the company is also the minister of the sector. He supervises himself, a no-no in management. The company has no checks and balances. It is simply the political tool of the executive government and has no managerial autonomy. 

(c) The number of employees of the company has quadrupled, from 32,000 in 1998 to about 120,000 today. Not only the number has increased, but their average credentials have deteriorated, as they are selected on the basis of “loyalty to the revolution”. In 2002-2003 about 22,000 technical staff and managers were dismissed by Hugo Chavez, during a two-day period, for political reasons, and their legal severance payments never made. 

(d) The company has practically abandoned outsourcing, in favor of a policy to own most auxiliary services to the core business. This has impacted negatively the overall efficiency of the company, has increased operational costs and led to the expropriation of numerous small and mid-size contractors without adequate compensation. 

 3. Moral Bankruptcy 

This is the worst aspect of the company: the loss of transparency, accountability and ethics that prevails within the corporation. 

 (a) The company has been totally politicized. Mr. Ramirez openly says that the company is an arm of the “revolution”, and that no one can work there unless is totally loyal to the government. Any employee showing signs of political dissidence is immediately expelled or called a saboteur. See speech of Ramirez to PDVSA managers (part 1) and, in particular, part 2. 

 (b) Oil income has been diverted from the Venezuelan Central Bank, where it should go by law, to parallel funds without transparency (like FONDEN). Money is handled by four persons: the president (Chavez and now Maduro), Jorge Giordani, Nelson Merentes and Rafael Ramirez. As Mr. Ramirez said to Hugo Chavez: “fortunately we don’t have to account to anyone…”. 

(c) No-bid contracts are the norm, given to friends and relatives, as I have documented in previous papers and articles. See here and here. Newer cases of extreme corruption within the company include the case of the barge Aban Pearl (see here) the case of Derwick Associates (see here) and the case of the oil tanker Carabobo (see here). 

(d) The giving of subsidized or, even, free oil to Cuba, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Bolivia and to Caribbean states in exchange for bananas, black beans and other staples. In particular the delivery of 100,000 BPD to Cuba during the last 7 years or so, in exchange for bodyguards, sport trainers, pseudo medical staff and other diffuse services, represent an act of political treason involving a loss to the country of some $3-4 billion per year. 

 4. Financial Bankruptcy Thanks to Sergio Saez and his very detailed analysis of the financial situation of PDVSA (personal communication) I can summarize the extent of the financial catastrophe of PDVSA, as reflected in the Consolidated Financial Statements of the company for 2012. 

 (a) Income effectively received by PDVSA in 2012: $59,579,000,000 

This is the net income because of the $121,000,000,000 of total gross income during 2012, PDVSA had to spend $40,000,000,000 in oil bought abroad and 24,000,000,000 had to be paid to other countries. Less: Operational costs $24,401,000,000 Contribution to the National Budget $26,404,000,000 Given to Parallel Fund, FONDEN $8,311,000,000 Total $59,116,000,000. As we can see the income only served to cover the above expenses. In order to finance “social” programs and to attend to capital investments the company had no other alternative than to borrow money. 

(b) The total production of the company and foreign partners was 2,9 million BPD. 

 Less: 

 Volume required by the domestic market 0,8 million BPD Given to Cuba, practically free*

 0,1 million BPD Distributed via PetroCaribe and ALBA, highly subsidized**

 0,3 million BPD Given to China to pay for loans

 0,4 million BPD Given to Belarus, Portugal and Iran to pay for loans 0,1 million BPD 

 Total deductions 1,7 million BPD 

*Note: Venezuela paid Cuba $284 million, in cash, on top of the oil. 

**Note: Price obtained averages $62 per barrel, little paid in cash. 

Therefore, the net volume that PDVSA sold at commercial prices in the world markets was only about 1,2 to 1,3 million BPD. The average income received by PDVSA for every barrel of oil was only about $54. The nation is only receiving half of the world commercial price for very barrel of oil produced. This would be enough to dismiss Mr. Ramirez and place him under criminal investigation. 

(c) As a result of this tragic financial situation PDVSA is now forced to borrow money to invest and, even, to help paying ordinary expenses. 

They owe the Venezuelan Central Bank the equivalent of $30 billion that this bank has printed in order to give it to the company. They owe China about $30 billion. They have issued about $25 billion in bonds. They have received about $6 billion in loans from foreign companies, theoretically to be used in the Orinoco área. They owe suppliers and contractors about $27 billion. They have financial contingencies of the order of $10 billion. As a result PDVSA had debts or financial commitments of some $128 billion by the end of 2012 and surely a greater amount by the end of 2013. 

I am not a financial expert, by any means, but I suspect I am looking at a bankrupt company, especially since the value of their assets is lower than this figure, specially since the oil reserves are the property of the nation and are not a part of PDVSA’s assets. 

 5. CONCLUSION 

As a Venezuelan citizen it is my duty to denounce this situation to fellow Venezuelans and to international public opinion. I believe a gigantic crime against the nation of Venezuela has been committed by Mr. Rafael Ramirez and his collaborators. I believe this crime has to be the object of immediate intervention by Venezuelan authorities. I am also aware that there are no independent Venezuelan authorities existing at this moment in time. However, I hope this accusation finds an echo in international public opinion and contributes to a proper understanding of the Venezuelan tragedy, one that many of my countrymen still do not comprehend.

Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and his US Business Partners

Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez and his U.S. business partners
Link

EVAZQUEZGER@OTTOREICH.COM

Venezuela is immersed in a political and economic tragedy of catastrophic proportions. As a result of Hugo Chávez’s “21st Century Socialism,” food and other essentials are increasingly scarce, while violence and crime rise exponentially.

The country’s top rulers include people designated as “drug kingpins” by the U.S. Treasury Department, as well as civilians and military officers more interested in acquiring personal wealth than in the administration of civil institutions. It should be no surprise, therefore, that some unscrupulous Venezuelans have made enormous fortunes there recently.

The Venezuelan slur for the beneficiaries of this 21st Century chaos is “ Boliburgueses” or “ Bolichicos.” A rough English translation of the words from the Spanish would be “Boligarchs,” and “Young Boligarchs,” for the new oligarchy that always accompanies revolutions allegedly carried out in the name of the exploited.

In a free economy, like ours, an entrepreneur can accumulate, after much effort and competition, a multimillion-dollar fortune if he or she can create a product or service that people are willing to buy. For example, according to Forbes Magazine, the founder and former CEO of Yahoo, Jerry Yang, has a fortune estimated at $1.2 billion while Aubrey McClendon, co-founder of Chesapeake Energy, the second-largest U.S. natural gas producer, has a fortune estimated at $1.1 billion. No reasonable person in the United States would shun those successful executives and others even more prosperous — for example, Microsoft’s Bill Gates, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, or the late Apple founder Steve Jobs.

In Chávez’s Venezuela, however, a politically favored group (some with no previous experience in complex sectors such as energy and finance) were able to accumulate, sometimes in four years, fortunes that allow them to purchase luxury mansions in the U.S., extravagant estates in Europe, the costliest private jets and automobiles, exceptional racehorses and more.

The exact amount of the fortunes is impossible to estimate, since they were obtained illegitimately and are being hidden by witting or unwitting bankers, mostly overseas.

How does this affect the United States and why should we care?

Because most of the culprits live in or come regularly to this country. They do not pay U.S. taxes on most of their wealth because they only bring in the “few” millions required to maintain their profligate lifestyles. They use U.S. banks to move money and to maintain their extravagant properties. They are aided by prominent public relations consultants, law firms, “private investigation” agencies and tax specialists that help clean up their image and protect their assets but that also intimidate those who might expose their clients.

To cover their tracks and attempt to enjoy the privilege of living in our country, some Boligarchs have launched lawsuits against honest Venezuelan businessmen in American courts. The purpose is to create a smokescreen to hide behind, and prevent the U.S. government from expelling the real offenders. Accustomed to the arrogance of power in their country, they believe that money trumps the law.

Some of their lawyers send threatening letters to journalists and news outlets, to block negative reports about their clients. Apparently, this is what one does when the major cause of the country’s destruction rests on one’s shoulders.

It is essential to point out that the majority of Venezuelans who have come to our shores seeking refuge are honest victims of the Chavista kleptocracy.

Merely having made money in Venezuela does not make one dishonest.

As for the term “Boligarchs,” Venezuelans refer to those who have wittingly benefited from the looting of their nation, who have amassed fortunes exceeding $1-2 billion, in many cases, from illegitimate awards of government contracts, from kickbacks and other gifts to government officials and from other unethical and immoral activities.

The destruction of Venezuelan society is the result of the Venezuelans’ own actions: Those that for the past 14 years have governed by failed policies based on Marxist ideology and class hatred. Those who did not dare speak out in time against the authoritarianism and thievery of Chávez and his cronies. And those who disregarded any sense of morality and instead exploited the absence of the rule of law to build huge fortunes on the backs of their fellow countrymen.

The United States does not bear the responsibility for the Venezuelan tragedy.

But we would be complicit if we remained silent to the looting, especially when we know where much of the money is, and that many of these looters are today enjoying the peace and security that the rule of law underpins in our country.

The U.S. government must stop providing refuge to Chávez’s business partners in the United States. Federal officials know who they are.

Otto Reich is a former assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere Affairs and U.S. ambassador in Venezuela. Ezequiel Vazquez-Ger is a member of the nonprofit organization Americas Forum for Freedom and Prosperity.

Corruption, poor governance and inflation

Corruption, poor governance and inflation = chaos
Troubled Currencies: Exchange Rates and Inflation
Country: Argentina
Date: 7/9/2013
Black-Market Exchange Rate*: $7.98
Official Exchange Rate: $5.42
Implied Annual Inflation Rate:  24.60%
Current Official Inflation Rate: 10.34%
Country: Iran
Date: 7/9/2013
Black-Market Exchange Rate*:  $33,100.00
Official Exchange Rate:  $24,777.00
Implied Annual Inflation Rate: 73.70%
Current Official Inflation Rate: 31.00%
Country: North Korea
Date:  6/25/2013
Black-Market Exchange Rate*: $8,043.00
Official Exchange Rate: $131.70
Implied Annual Inflation Rate: 78.64%
Current Official Inflation Rate: N/A
Country: Syria
Date:  7/9/2013
Black-Market Exchange Rate*: $295.00
Official Exchange Rate: $131.17
Implied Annual Inflation Rate: 336.50%
Current Official Inflation Rate: 36.43%
Country: Venezuela
Date: 7/9/2013
Black-Market Exchange Rate*: $31.59
Official Exchange Rate: $6.29
Implied Annual Inflation Rate: 240.10%
Current Official Inflation Rate: 35.24%
Source: aliqtisadi.com, dailynk.com, dolarblue.net, gate.ahram.org.eg, dollar.nu, eranico.com, Federal Reserve Economic Database, various news sources, and calculations by Prof. Steve H. Hanke, The Johns Hopkins University.
*Local Currency per USD

Professor Steve Hanke,  Johns Hopkins University and Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute,  has been working on a project called “Troubled Currencies”, which he defines as very unstable and associated with high rates of inflation. In the countries having those currencies the statistics are often adulterated in order to hide the true extent of their economic problems.  Professor Hanke has selected the following countries for his work:  Argentina, Iran, North Korea, Syria and Venezuela (see table above).  In the case of Venezuela the table shows an official rate of exchange of Bs. 6.29 to the dollar while the parallel rate is today Bs. 31.59 to the dollar. According to Professor Hanke this implies that the Venezuelan annual inflation rate is 240.1 percent rather than the official rate of inflation of 35.24 percent estimated by the government. Only Syria, a country immersed in a cruel and generalized civil war, has a higher rate of inflation than Venezuela.

Although the emphasis of the study is economic one cannot resist the temptation to link the chaotic economic conditions of these countries to the nature of their political regimes and the quality of their governance. All exhibit authoritarian styles of a militaristic (North Korea, Venezuela, Syria), religious (North Korea) or populist nature (Argentina, Venezuela) and share generally high levels of corruption. The Corruption Index of Transparency International for 2012  places countries with troubled currencies as follows, in the list of 175 countries:

Argentina       102
Iran               133
Syria             144
Venezuela     165
North Korea 174

Venezuelan official: Ex-judge 'sold his soul' to the DEA

(CNN) -- An ex-judge who accused Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez of manipulating court rulings is a fugitive who "sold his soul to the devil" when he agreed to talk with U.S. investigators, the nation's foreign minister said Thursday.
"People like him will keep being defeated and his lies will be unveiled," Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro said.
Eladio Aponte Aponte, who was a Supreme Court justice until the Venezuelan government accused him of connections with an alleged drug trafficker last month, told SOiTV that he made rulings in cases based on requests from Chavez and other top officials.
"They just asked for favors that I complied with. And woe be the judge that refused to cooperate. ... They were dismissed," Aponte Aponte said
Top Venezuelan authorities were aware of at least one instance in which a military lieutenant was caught transporting cocaine to an army camp -- and made personal phone calls asking the judge to look the other way, Aponte Aponte told the Miami-based TV network.
CNN has not independently confirmed the former justice's accusations.
In recent years, the U.S. Treasury Department has placed several Venezuelan officials, including the nation's current defense minister, on its drug kingpin list.
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration flew Aponte Aponte to the United States from Costa Rica early Monday morning, according to the head of the Central American country's intelligence agency.
Mauricio Boraschi said U.S. Embassy officials contacted the Costa Rican government after the former judge -- who had been in Costa Rica for about two weeks -- reached out to officials in Washington.
The U.S. State Department told CNN it could not comment on what it called "this law enforcement matter."
Venezuela's foreign minister criticized the United States for attempting to destabilize his country's government.
"It is easy to understand how a fugitive from justice processed for his connections with drug trafficking mafias and removed from his job has sold his soul to the DEA," Maduro said. "The DEA has appeared again as a political actor in Venezuela against Venezuela."
The DEA has not commented on Aponte Aponte. An agency official who watched portions of the interview that aired on CNN en Español said it was "very interesting."
The former justice told SOiTV that high-ranking Venezuelan officials were involved in drug trafficking, but declined to say who or offer evidence.
In one instance, Aponte Aponte said, Chavez's office called and asked for the former judge's help after a military lieutenant was caught with cocaine. So did the nation's defense minister and other top officials, Aponte Aponte said.
They said "he was a good guy, that it was the president's order, that the president was very interested in the case," Aponte Aponte said.
The former judge also described weekly meetings in the Venezuelan vice president's office with the president of the Supreme Court, the attorney general and other top officials.
"That is where the directives of the justice system come from. ... They decide what guidelines to follow depending on the political climate," he said.
Several of his remarks contradicted previous statements by top Venezuelan officials -- including Chavez.
When asked whether there were political prisoners in Venezuela -- something Chavez has previously denied -- Aponte Aponte said yes.
"There are people they ordered not to be released. ... In a nutshell, we had to accept the fact that they were not to be released, so the justice system turned its back on them," he said.
Asked whether he felt that the Venezuelan government had turned against him, Aponte Aponte said, "I think they did that a long time ago. I just didn't realize it."
Venezuelan officials removed Aponte Aponte from his post last month, accusing him of providing a government credential to a man authorities allege was one of the world's top drug lords.
Aponte Aponte, who has not confirmed or denied that accusation, left Venezuela the day he was supposed to face questioning in the Venezuelan National Assembly.
A government ethics commission said the judge had committed "serious misconduct" and a "breach of public ethics" when he allegedly provided a credential to suspected drug trafficker Walid Makled.
Makled is currently on trial in Venezuela, where he is accused of drug trafficking and killing a journalist who was investigating his family. He was extradited to Venezuela from Colombia last year.
The United States designated Makled as one of the world's most significant drug kingpins in May 2009 and had also requested his extradition.
Makled, who denies U.S. accusations of drug trafficking, said in an October interview with Venezuela's El Nacional newspaper that he paid millions of dollars to government officials and top military brass so his family's shipping business could operate at some of the nation's largest ports.
"If I am a narcotrafficker, the whole Chavez government is a narcotrafficker," he told the newspaper.
Chavez has strongly denied those accusations and stood up for his government officials.
Maduro said Thursday that Aponte Aponte's removal from office showed that "in Venezuela the laws work. No one is privileged or protected."
Aponte Aponte told SOiTV that his daughter had invited Makled to her wedding, "but we didn't have any idea of the activities of this gentleman. We only knew him as a reputable businessman."
The former judge claimed Venezuelan officials had unfairly used the Makled case to destroy his reputation.
"I am not going to pay for a crime I never committed," Aponte Aponte told SOiTV, but he said he wants to make up for the harm his rulings have caused.
Aponte Aponte told SOiTV he left Venezuela disillusioned, but has since changed his perspective.
"When I finished packing all my stuff in my office, all my books, I told myself I'd never touch another law book. Justice is nothing, justice is a ball of putty. I say putty because it can be molded, for or against. I didn't want to have anything to do with the law anymore. I said I'd rather have a hotdog stand," he said. "But then, after all my reflection, and I had time to think it over, and after I saw that, that my friends have offered to help me, I now think you need to fight for justice. And that blindfolded lady has to be shown the way."
Saying he felt afraid for his life and betrayed by his colleagues, the former judge said he would go back to Venezuela to face the accusations against him only if officials respect his rights.
"Knowing the system from the inside, and how it works, and how it's handled, I don't think I'd have any rights at all. Not in my case at least," he said.

CNN's Fernando del Rincon, Ana Maria Luengo-Romero, Jamie Crawford and Terry Frieden contributed to this report.

Venezuela's Hugo Chavez is a Sick Man

Agree 100% with this article of Jerry Brewer vdebate reporter

Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez is a Sick Man
By: Jerry Brewer
President Hugo Chavez’s physical and mental health transcends a myriad of opinions and judgment.Chavez’s ever-growing and strong political opposition stands firm in awaiting what many believe is the end of his socialist version of the Bolivarian Revolution, either by election defeat or he succumbing to his critical physical illness.
Chavez pompously says he will be president through the year 2030.To a man who adores his own “one-way freedom” with the media, he closely guards his medical condition; waffling from just needing one treatment of chemotherapy; and sequentially now reaching his fourth recently conducted again in Cuba.
Bolivia’s leftist President Evo Morales went there to be at the side of his socialist mentor. Morales left Cuba to speak at the United Nations last week- assuming Chavez’s usual anti-US and Israel diatribe. Trying to defend world accusations of his regime’s complicity in drug trafficking and terrorism, he chose to blame the US for rumor-mongering. A pretty heady position by a rogue leftist leader who“kicked”the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) out of Bolivia; following the lead of Chavez who did the same. The region’s drug activity for both nations is very well known to a free world’s acute focus on the truth. How can any savvy, sane and inquisitive, person believe Chavez and Morale’s pathological nonsense? Adjoining Latin American neighbors are not fooled.
Morales is now having his own problems at home with the indigenous Bolivian people violently oppressed while trying to assemble peacefully in disagreement with the government.
Let’s face the fact that Hugo Chavez is Venezuela’s master of lies and thus must keep his regime constantly censoring the media. His one-way media output constantly reflects his physical and mentalfitness, as well as his frequent sound-byte attacks on the US (capitalism and imperialism). This, muchlike the father of lies- Fidel Castro’s lengthy absence from the public eye for around four years. Fidel Castro later would emerge and truthfully state that he was near death.Chavez frequently goes to extreme measures to censor Venezuela media- especially after the Christian Science Monitor exposed and published the steady stream of wealthy Venezuelans abandoning theirformer beloved homeland for Panama. Too, it was reported that Chavez’s top military leaders were involved in contingency plans on a move to Panama- this via one of “Panama’s top real estate developers.” The pathological nature of Chavez’s words and tenure in office as Venezuela’s rogue leftist leader, isgraphically and factually demonstrated by the embarrassment of slim victory for majority rule in the 2010 parliamentary election in Venezuela on September 26, 2010.This sparked a tirade of Chavez anger that led to his usual non-stately and crude political demeanor of confrontation. He quickly embarked on travel to meet with his mentor and revolutionary partner Fidel Castro in Cuba, as well as to the embracing arms of Iran’s Ahmadinejad. Too, his stops did not forget his pals in Russia, Syria, and others.
Chavez recently continued to exhibit his flawed and ill propensities to embarrass a once proud and prosperous democratic populace in Venezuela, by “solidarity wishes to Libya’s“on the run”PresidentMuammar Gaddafi and Syria’s embattled President Bashar-al-Assad whose regime is hunting down and killing street protesters. Chavez, as usual, blames this on“Yankee aggression- allowing his flawed mental capacities to ignore a majority world support of those people of those actions wishing to be free of oppression and lies by their rogue leftist dictators.Chavez’s mental illness, whether temporary or not, also does not allow him to see that the people on thestreets in protest against the murdering regimes of Libya and Syria are their own people in masses.
What part of that does Chavez or his own supporters miss? All they have to do is use the free world media for the facts, and not his own personal blog (Twitter) that spews his tired rhetoric of falsehood and subterfuge. He goes by the name of “Chavez Candanga (literally-“the devil”).”
Now there is acurious mentor for him also.The squandering (and the simple disappearance) of billions of dollars in hard earned oil revenue forVenezuela’s citizens, is Chavez’s rationale to deceive a very savvy (but violently oppressed) Venezuelan people into believing Venezuela is to be invaded by the “Yankees.”
This allows him to buy and hoard massive weapons and issue blank checks to leftist regimes throughout the world that care not one iota for the true welfare of the Venezuelan people. Only Chavez garners the accolades for“his”generosity and personal support of murdering world dictator-like regimes.
The truth is that the world has previously seen leftist leaders and regimes telegraph their true intention sthrough their anger and arrogance while consolidating power. Those acts routinely weaken democratic institutions, and trample on the guarantees of human rights. In the absence of a credible judicial control in Venezuela, the Chavez government has implemented “systematically discriminatory policies that have limited the exercise of freedom of expression of journalists, the right to freedom of association for workers and the civil society capacity to promote human rights in Venezuela. The Chavez government has implemented discriminatory practices against its political opponents and critics.
At times, the president himself has openly endorsed acts of discrimination.”Chavez has further defined his sinister agenda through a manifest disregard of the principle of separation of powers and, especially, the idea of an independent judiciary that is “indispensable for protecting fundamental rights in a democratic society.”
What more proof is necessary? It came with the political take over of the Supreme Court by Chávez and his regime.The people of Venezuela, both supporters and non-supporters of Hugo Chavez, urgently need to implement surgical-like fact finding- the search for the truth and facts from a “world”media. In this manner, they can be sure that they did their own homework; used their own God-given minds; and made the right decisions for their future and families. With a factual search for the truth- a free world believes they will say“Nunca mas,”to Hugo Chavez, or any similar leader of destruction and misery.
CRIMINAL JUSTICE INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATES United States of America—Jerry Brewer is C.E.O. of Criminal Justice International Associates (northern Virginia), a global risk mitigation firm.
Website is located at http://www.cjiausa.org/.
mailto:jbrewer@cjiausa.org
TWITTER:cjiausa
Media archives:www.scribd.com/jbrewer31 and http://mexidata.info/

Violence and Politics in Venezuela

I use to invite foreigners to go to Venezuela, no anymore..... too much crime

vdebate reporter

Violence and Politics in Venezuela
Latin America Report N°38 17 Aug 2011

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Every half hour, a person is killed in Venezuela. The presence of organised crime combined with an enormous number of firearms in civilian hands and impunity, as well as police corruption and brutality, have entrenched violence in society. While such problems did not begin with President Hugo Chávez, his government has to account for its ambiguity towards various armed groups, its inability or unwillingness to tackle corruption and criminal complicity in parts of the security forces, its policy to arm civilians “in defence of the revolution”, and – last but not least – the president’s own confrontational rhetoric. Positive steps such as constructive engagement with Colombia as well as some limited security reform do not compensate for these failures. While the prospect of presidential elections in 2012 could postpone social explosion, the deterioration of the president’s health has added considerable uncertainty. In any event, the degree of polarisation and militarisation in society is likely to undermine the chances for either a non-violent continuation of the current regime or a peaceful transition to a post-Chávez era.
A significant part of the problem was inherited from previous administrations. In 1999, the incoming President Chávez was faced with a country in which homicide rates had tripled in less than two decades, and many institutions were in the process of collapse, eroded by corruption and impunity. During the “Bolivarian revolution”, however, these problems have become substantially worse. Today, more than ten people are murdered on the streets of Caracas every day – the majority by individual criminals, members of street gangs or the police themselves – while kidnapping and robbery rates are soaring. By attributing the problem to “social perceptions of insecurity”, or structural causes, such as widespread poverty, inherited from past governments, the government is downplaying the magnitude and destructive extent of criminal violence. The massive, but temporary, deployment of security forces in highly visible operations, and even police reform and disarmament programs, will have little impact if they are not part of an integrated strategy to reduce crime, end impunity and protect citizens.
The presence of international organised crime groups is also nothing new, but there is evidence of increased activity during the past decade that in turn has contributed not only to the rise in homicides, kidnappings and extortion rates, but also to a growth in micro drug trafficking, making poor and urban neighbourhoods more violent. Venezuela has become a major drug trafficking corridor, and different groups, including Colombian guerrillas, paramilitaries and their successors, have been joined by mafia gangs from Mexico and elsewhere in benefiting from widespread corruption and complicity on the part of security forces, some of it seemingly tolerated by individuals in the highest spheres of government.
The government has displayed a particular ambiguity toward non-state armed groups that sympathise with its political project. Urban “colectivos” combining political and criminal activities, including armed actions against opposition targets, operate largely unchallenged and with broad impunity. The Bolivarian Liberation Forces have established control over parts of the border with Colombia, while the FARC and ELN guerrillas from the other side have long found shelter and aid on Venezuelan soil. In the context of the rapprochement between Presidents Chávez and Santos, the cost-benefit ratio behind the unacknowledged alliance between Colombian guerrillas and the Venezuelan government appears to have changed. However, it is still too early to be certain whether the government is willing and able to translate positive commitments and some initial promising steps into effective, sustainable action against such groups.
Violence and corruption have been facilitated by a steady process of institutional erosion that has become particularly manifest in the justice system and the security forces. While impunity levels soar, highly dysfunctional and abusive police have endangered citizen security. Heavily politicised, the armed forces are increasingly seen as part of the problem, enmeshed with organised crime and pressed by the president to commit themselves to the partisan defence of his “revolution”. The creation, arming and training of pro-governmental militias further increase the danger that political differences may ultimately be settled outside the constitutional framework, through deadly force.
In this highly charged environment, political violence has so far remained more a latent threat than a reality. However, as the country heads into what promises to be a fiercely contested presidential election, with very high stakes for both sides, this fragile equilibrium may not hold. Moreover, uncertainties provoked by the president’s illness have compounded short- and medium-term prospects. The greatest danger is likely to come after the election, regardless of who wins, since the entrenched levels of violence are prone to undermine either peaceful regime continuity, hand-over to a successor or any transitional arrangement. Moreover, whatever the political complexion of a future government, the extensive presence of organised crime networks is likely to seriously threaten medium- and long-term stability. The necessary actions to avoid that scenario must begin with a commitment by all sides to peaceful constitutional means of conflict resolution and with effective government measures to disarm and dismantle criminal structures, restore the rule of law and root out corruption in state institutions.

Bogotá/Brussels, 17 August 2011

Venezuela rated the worst performer in accountability - World Justice Project

According to the World Justice Project's Rule of Law Index - Venezuela rated the worst performer in accountability

The Rule of Law Index was prepared by the World Justice Project -an organization partly funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (created by computer entrepreneur Bill Gates) that regularly reviews compliance with the rule of law and access to independent justice in the world Transparency
Venezuela is viewed as the worst government in the world in accountability and effective checks by its citizens, according to the Rule of Law Index -an annual survey on rule of law around the world released on Monday by the World Justice Project, a US institution.
Venezuela is "the worst performer in the world in accountability and effective checks on the executive power," said the report entitled Rule of Law Index around the World prepared by the World Justice Project, AFP reported.
In Venezuela "corruption is widespread (ranking 54 out of 61 countries), crime and violence are common (ranking 64), government institutions are not transparent and the judiciary system is ineffective and subject to political influence (ranks last, 66.)".
"Venezuela ranks relatively well in terms of religious freedom (ranking 15th), accessibility of the civil courts (ranking 21st), and protection of labor rights (ranking 27th).
"The country also displays serious flaws in guaranteeing respect for fundamental rights, in particular, freedom of opinion and expression, and the right to privacy," the text added.

The Bolivarian Brain Drain

Completely true. Chavez hates intelligent people and people with money different from him, he, his friends and his family which have steal a lot of our Venezuelan money. Insteresting in this article:

• The government is seizing privately owned companies and farms. Labor unions have been crushed. Political opponents are routinely harassed or else prosecuted by chavista controlled courts.
• But in the 1970s and 1980s, Venezuelans were the envy of Latin America. Oil rich, educated, with a solid democratic tradition, they lived a tier above the chronically unstable societies in the region.

The Bolivarian Brain Drain

Hugo Chavez and his allies are tightening their grips, forcing the intelligentsia to leave in droves.
Gregorio Marrero / AP
By Mac Margolis Newsweek Web Exclusive
Jul 1, 2009

For just a moment, in the early days of his presidency, Venezuela's Hugo Chávez looked almost like a healer. "Let's ask for God's help to accept our differences and come together in dialogue," he famously implored his conflicted compatriots in 2002. Instead what Venezuelans got was an avenger. The government is seizing privately owned companies and farms. Labor unions have been crushed. Political opponents are routinely harassed or else prosecuted by chavista controlled courts. And now after a decade of the so-called Bolivarian revolution, tens of thousands of disillusioned Venezuelan professionals have had enough. Artists, lawyers, physicians, managers and engineers are leaving the country by droves, while those already abroad are scrapping plans to return. The wealthiest among them are buying condos in Miami and Panama City. Cashiered oil engineers are working rigs in the North Sea and sifting the tar sands of western Canada. Those of European descent have applied for passports from their native lands. Academic scholarships are lifeboats. An estimated million Venezuelans have moved abroad in the decade since Chávez took power.

This exodus is splitting families and interrupting careers, but also sabotaging the country's future. Just as nations across the developing world are managing to lure their scattered expatriates back home to fuel recovering economies and join vibrant democracies, the outrush of Venezuelan brainpower is gutting universities and thinktanks, crippling industries and hastening the economic disarray that threatens to destroy one of the richest countries in the hemisphere. Forget minerals, oil and natural gas; the biggest export of the Bolivarian revolution is talent.

The Bolivarian diaspora is a reversal of fortune on a massive scale. Through most of the last century, Venezuela was a haven for immigrants fleeing Old World repression and intolerance. Refugees from totalitarianism and religious intolerance in Spain, Italy and Germany and Eastern Europe flocked to this country nestled between the Caribbean and the Andean cordillera and helped forge one of the most vibrant societies in the New World. Like most developing nations, the country was split between the burgeoning poor and an encastled elite. But in the 1970s and 1980s, Venezuelans were the envy of Latin America. Oil rich, educated, with a solid democratic tradition, they lived a tier above the chronically unstable societies in the region. "We had a relatively rich country that offered opportunities, with no insecurity. No one thought about leaving," says Diego Arria, a former Venezuelan ambassador to the United Nations, who lives in New York. "Now we have rampant crime, a repressive political system that borders on apartheid, and reverse migration. Venezuela is now a country of emigrants."
Click here to find out more!

It's much the same all over the axis of Hugo, the constellation of 10 states in the Andes, Central America and the Caribbean that have followed Chávez in lockstep in the march towards so called 21st century socialism. In the name of power, justice and plenty for the downtrodden the leaders of the "Bolivarian alternative" in Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua are rewriting their constitutions, intimidating the media and stoking class and ethnic conflicts that occasionally explode in hate and violence. (The military coup on June 28 that ousted Honduran president Manuela Zelaya, a key Chávez ally, is the latest example of the blowback from the Bolivarian revolution.) The middle classes and the young are taking the brunt. A study just released by the Latin America Economic System, an intergovernmental economic research institute, reports that the outflow of highly skilled labor, aged 25 or older, from Venezeula to OECD countries rose 216 percent between 1990 and 2007. A recent study by Vanderbilt University in Nashville showed more than one in three Bolivians under 30 had plans to emigrate, up from 12 percent a decade ago, while 47 percent of 18-year-olds said they planned to leave. Many established professionals have already made up their minds. "I ask myself if I'm not patriotic enough," says Giovanna Rivero, an acclaimed Bolivian novelist who is leaving for a teaching job at the University of Florida and has no plans to come back. "But Bolivia is coming apart. There are people who´ve known each other all their lives who don't talk to one another anymore."

In Venezuela, Chavez has pushed hard against anyone who refuses to accept his party line. Daniel Benaim was one of Venezuela's top independent television producers, turning out prime time entertainment and game shows for national channels with Canal Uno, a leading production house. "We had 160 employees and a 24/7 operation," he says. But after the failed coup against Chávez in 2002, the government cracked down on independent media and programming budgets dried up. In a month, Canal Uno was down to four employees and heading for bankruptcy. Benaim redirected his business to serve the international advertising market and raked in prestigious international awards, including multiple Latin Emmys. But opportunities for non-chavistas in Venezuela had dried up. One by one, he watched the people he trained over the years leave the country. "I used to give angry speeches about the brain drain. Now I have to bite my tongue," says Benaim, who is also moving to the U.S. "We had the best minds in the business, and now there's nothing for them here."

One of Benaim´s associates was Gonzalo Bernal Ibarra. He, too, had soared up the career ladder in broadcast television and until recently ran a campus network that reached 100,000 students. Everything changed in late 2007 when Chávez lost a refrendum to rewrite the constitution and began to crack down on his media critics, including Bernal. Strangers in jackets with weighted pockets--dress code for Chávez´s military intelligence police--began to follow him day and night. Then congress was set to pass a bill obliging schools to teach 21st century socialism. "I didn't want my kid learning that crap," he says. Even shopping became a trial as spiking inflation and government price controls emptied the supermarkets of basic goods like milk, eggs and meat. One day in late 2008, he opened a bottle of whiskey and held a yard sale. "I got drunk and watched my life get carted away," he says. He now lives in the Washington, D.C. area, with his wife and six year old daughter, and is trying to adapt. "I was living in the most beautiful, wonderful, funny country in the world. Now a third of my friends are gone. In another ten years, Venezuela is going to be a crippled country."

No industry has been harder hit by the flight of talent than Venezuela's oil sector. A decade ago, Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) ranked as one of the top five energy companies in the world. Everything changed under Chávez, who named a Marxist university professor with no experience in the industry to head the company. PDVSA's top staff immediately went on strike and paralyzed the country. Chávez responded by firing 22,000 people practically overnight, including the country's leading oil experts. As many as 4,000 of PDVSA's elite staff are now working overseas. "The company is a shambles," says Gustavo Coronel, a former member of the PDVSA board, who now works in the Washington D.C. as an oil consultant. Up until 2003, researchers at the company's Center for Technological research and Development generated 20 to 30 patents a year. Last year it produced none, even though its staff has doubled. PDVSA produced 3.2 million barrels of crude oil a day when Chávez took control. Now it pumps 2.4 milion, according to independent estimates.

The decline has spread across Venezuelan society, heightened by cronyism, corruption and censorship. In May, on the pretext that scientists were pursuing "obscure" research projects such as "whether there is life on Venus," Chávez began to slash budgets at the university science centers, where the country's cutting edge public health research was carried out. Instead he poured petrodollars into official "misiones cientificas" (scientific missions), where the purse strings are controlled by Chávez allies. Now the country's most respected research institutes are falling behind. Earlier this year, Jaime Requena. a Cambridge University trained biologist at the Institute of Advanced Studies, was forced into retirement and stripped of his pension after publishing a paper charging that scientific research in Venezuela was "at a 30-year low." The number of papers published by Venezuelans in international scientific journals fell from 958 to 831, a 15 percent drop in just the last three years. At aged 62, with an aging mother, Requena has few options. "It's not easy to get another job at my age. I would leave Venezuela if I could. My friends and colleagues all have."

An estimated 9,000 Venezuelan scientists are currently living in the U.S. - compared to 6,000 employed in Venezuela. One of the victims is an internationally acclaimed life sciences expert, who quit his job as chief of a major research laboratory in Caracas to try his luck in the U.S. in 2002, but always nursed hopes of returning. "I sent the government a number of proposals and they never got back to me," he says asking not to be named for fear of reprisals against his relatives in Venezuela. "Now it's all about politics. If you are not with Chávez you will never get grants. You will be persecuted. This is a war on merit." Venezuelan medical science, he said, is groping in the dark. "The last epidemiological report Venezuela published was in 2005," he says. "We don't even know what diseases we have and whether they are increasing or decreasing. This is the Cuban model, of keeping people in the dark."

The Bolivarian diaspora seems to be getting worse. Though census data is patchy, Latin American analysts say that outmigration from Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador has created sizeable enclaves in the U.S., Spain, Colombia and Central America. Panama City glistens with new buildings built by moneyed Venezuelan expatriates, who number some 15,000, up from a few thousand at the beginning of the decade. So many Venezuelans have flocked to Weston, a suburb of Fort Lauderdale, locals call it Westonzuela. There is hardly a middle class family in Venezuela without a son or daughter abroad," says Fernando Rodríguez, a columnist for the anti Chávez newspaper Tal Cual. In fact, far more people from the Bolivarian countries might be emigrating if it weren't for the global recession and rising hostility to outsiders, Venezuelan emigrants do not qualify as political refugees and enjoy no special advantage in the fierce competition for the 400,000 H1B work visas issued yearly by the U.S. for highly skilled migrants, three quarters of which go to Indians, who have an edge because they can speak English. "One reason we are not seeing more dislocation from these countries is that many people have no place to go," says Alejandro Portes, a sociologist who studies global migration at Princeton University.

Latin America has seen this before. Virtually the entire Cuban middle class fled to the U.S. after Fidel Castro's revolution, turning Miami into a business hub for Latin America while Havana moldered. The Cold War, stagflation, serial debt crises and massive unemployment drove the brain drain through the 1980s, Latin America's lost decade, especially in Chile, Colombia, Argentina, Peru and throughout Central America. By the early 2000s, some of the countries convulsed by dictatorship or guerrilla insurgency, such as Chile and Peru, had managed to reverse course, making their societies prosperous and safe. But other countries have struggled to bring their expatriates home. In the 1980s and 1990s, Colombia had become synonymous with cocaine, violent crime and guerrilla warfare, all of which drove some four million Colombians from their homes. Targeted by kidnappers and political thugs, tens of thousands of middle class professionals left the country. In 2002 Pres. Álvaro Uribe declared war on drugs and crime, and now onetime bandit cities like Cali, Medellin and Bogota are safer than ever and have even become models for the rest of crime-ridden Latin America. Yet the brain drain has not reversed. "Either the [emigrants] have found the American dream or they are not yet convinced that it's safe to return," says Jorge Rojas, of Codhes, a Colombian thinktank that tracks refugees. "It shows how difficult it can be to recover lost talent."

For the nations of the Bolivarian Revolution, this means some dark days are likely to be ahead. Even the wealthiest nations could ill afford to lose their best and brightest, and Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua have all fallen in the World Economic Forum's competitiveness index. Fitch ratings recently demoted all three countries' debt to junk status, while the World Bank placed the Bolivarian trio of Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela in the bottom quarter of its ease of doing business, along with most of the African continent.

Though much has been made of how developing world migrants can mitigate underdevelopment by sending precious savings back home, remittances will not close the widening talent gap that is sapping societies of their ablest hands. "If a 20-something engineer or computer specialist leaves the country, who cares? But in ten years we'll be feeling the loss," says Rául Maestres, a human resources expert in Caracas, whose son and daughter recently left Venezuela -he to work at U.S. architecture firm, she to study advertising in Buenos Aires. "When you think about the opportunities we have lost, you could sit down and cry."

Still there may be a glimmer of revival. Ostracized at home and unwelcome abroad, expatriate communities are trying to turn distance into strength. Using the web, universities and the expatriate grapevine, foreign nationals from the populist countries are talking to each other and building ties with dissidents around the world. Back home opposition movements are making a stand, launching protest marches and candidates in a major city in each country--Guayaquil in Ecuador, Santa Cruz de la Sierra in Bolivia, Maracaibo in Venezuela. "We are putting together a web of exiles as a counterbalance to authoritarianism," says Coronel, who is tapping the diaspora for a gathering in Ecuador or Argentina in the next few months. "You could call it a kind of axis of freedom." That may sound optimistic given the stranglehold Chávez and his followers have on their countries. But given the growing numbers and brain power of Latin America's new dissidents, uniting their voices might just make a difference.

A State in Grip of Kidnappers and the Family of Hugo Chávez - The New York Times

Scott Dalton for The New York Times
"This is what anarchy looks like, at least the type of anarchy where the family of Chávez accumulates wealth and power," said Ángel Santamaría, a Barinas cattleman whose 8-year-old son, Kusto, was held for ransom for 29 days.

By SIMON ROMERO
Published: July 20, 2009
BARINAS, Venezuela — Stretching over vast cattle estates at the foothills of the Andes, Barinas is known for two things: as the bastion of the family of President Hugo Chávez and as the setting for a terrifying surge in abductions, making it a contender for Latin America’s most likely place to get kidnapped.

The New York Times
Barinas is the home region of the family of Hugo Chávez.

An intensifying nationwide crime wave over the past decade has pushed the kidnapping rate in Venezuela past Colombia’s and Mexico’s, with about 2 abductions per 100,000 inhabitants, according to the Interior Ministry.

But nowhere in Venezuela comes close in abductions to Barinas, with 7.2 kidnappings per 100,000 inhabitants, as armed gangs thrive off the disarray here while Mr. Chávez’s family tightens its grip on the state. Seizures of cattle ranches and crumbling infrastructure also contribute to the sense of low-intensity chaos.

Barinas offers a unique microcosm of Mr. Chávez’s rule. Many poor residents still revere the president, born here into poverty in 1954. But polarization in Barinas is growing more severe, with others chafing at his newly prosperous parents and siblings, who have governed the state since the 1990s. While Barinas is a laboratory for projects like land reform, urgent problems like violent crime go unmentioned in the many billboards here extolling the Chávez family’s ascendancy.

“This is what anarchy looks like, at least the type of anarchy where the family of Chávez accumulates wealth and power as the rest of us fear for our lives,” said Ángel Santamaría, 57, a cattleman in the town of Nueva Bolivia whose son, Kusto, 8, was kidnapped while walking to school in May. He was held for 29 days, until Mr. Santamaría gathered a small ransom to free him.

The governor of Barinas, Adán Chávez, the president’s eldest brother and a former ambassador to Cuba, said this month that many of the kidnappings might have been a result of destabilization efforts by the opposition or so-called self-kidnappings: orchestrated abductions to reveal weaknesses among security forces, or to extort money from one’s own family.

“With each day that passes,” the governor said recently, “Barinas is safer than before.”

Through a spokeswoman, he declined to be interviewed.

In an election last year marred by accusations of fraud, Adán Chávez succeeded his own father, Hugo de los Reyes Chávez, a former schoolteacher who had governed Barinas for a decade with the president’s brother, Argenis, the former secretary of state in Barinas.

Another brother, Aníbal, is mayor of nearby Sabaneta, and another brother, Adelis, is a top banker at Banco Sofitasa, which does business with Adán’s government. Yet another brother, Narciso, was put in charge of cooperation projects with Cuba. The president’s cousin Asdrúbal holds a top post at the national oil company.

Politicians once loyal to the president who have broken with him and his family here contend that Mr. Chávez’s family has amassed wealth and landholdings through a series of deals carried out by front men.

One opposition leader, Wilmer Azuaje, detailed to prosecutors and legislators what he said was more than $20 million in illegal gains by the family since the president’s father was elected governor in 1998. But in a brief review of those claims, National Assembly, under the control of Chávez loyalists, cleared the family of charges of illicit enrichment.

“In the meantime, while the family wraps itself in the rhetoric of socialism, we are descending into a neo-capitalist chaos where all that matters is money,” said Alberto Santelíz, the publisher of La Prensa, a small opposition newspaper.

One reason for the rise in kidnappings is the injection of oil money into the local economy, with some families reaping quick fortunes because of ties to large infrastructure projects.

A new soccer stadium, built under the supervision of Adelis Chávez’s at a cost of more than $50 million, is still unfinished two years after its first game in 2007, joining other white elephants dotting Barinas’s landscape. Nearby lies the unfinished Museum of the Plains, intended to celebrate the culture of the president’s birthplace. A sprawling shopping mall stands half-completed after its backers fled a shakedown by construction unions.

More than a decade into the Chávez family’s rule in Barinas, the state remains Venezuela’s poorest, with average monthly household income of about $800, according to the National Statistics Institute. Kidnapping, once feared only by the wealthy, has spread in Barinas to include the poor. In one case this year of a 3-year-old girl kidnapped in the slum of Mi Jardín, the abductor, when told that the only thing of value owned by the girl’s mother was a refrigerator, instructed her to sell it to pay the ransom.

Kidnapping specialists here said the abductors were drawn from two Colombian rebel groups, a small Venezuelan guerrilla faction called the Bolivarian Liberation Front, other criminal gangs and corrupt police officers. Just a fraction of the kidnappings result in prison sentences.

“With impunity rampant in Barinas, how can our governor say with a straight face that people are kidnapping themselves?” asked Lucy Montoya, 38, a hardware store owner whose sister, Doris, a 41-year-old mother of three, was kidnapped in March.

Doris Montoya’s abductors have not freed her or communicated with her family since receiving ransom money in May, Lucy Montoya said, adding, “The government’s handling of this crisis is an affront to our dignity as human beings.”

Meanwhile, new figures show kidnappings climbing to 454 known cases in the first six months of 2009, including about 66 in Barinas, compared with a nationwide 2008 estimate of between 537 and 612. But officials acknowledge that the true figures are probably higher because many cases are never reported.

Here in Barinas, victims seethe over the inaction of the president and his family. “Our ruling dynasty is effectively telling us we are expendable,” said Rodolfo Peña, 38, a businessman who was abducted here last year. “The only other plausible theory,” he said, “is that they are too inebriated by power to notice the emergency at their feet.”

Sign in to Recommend A version of this article appeared in print on July 21, 2009, on page A4 of the New York edition.

Pressure Mounts for Entire Chavez Clan

This is true....... We are tired of Chavez and his family, he won in the last election because he committed fraud.......

vdebate reportef

VENEZUELAN STATE ELECTIONS
Pressure Mounts for Entire Chavez Clan
By Jens Glüsing

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is facing yet another battle for power in gubernatorial elections. Even in his home state, a growing number of people are getting tired of the president and the Chavez clan.

ANZEIGE
When Doña Elena Frías de Chavez goes to church, she is accompanied by seven bodyguards and driven in a small convoy of three armored Ford SUVs. It is shortly after seven, and the mass has just begun in the church of Cristo Rey in Barinas, a city of 270,000 people on the hot plains of western Venezuela. The mother of the Venezuelan president takes a seat in the second row. She is wearing a turquoise blouse and sunglasses, and her hair is dyed blonde.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez comes from a devout family. Doña Elena used to walk to mass at her church, which was only two blocks from her old house. But now she and her husband live in an enormous mansion in a well-to-do section of Barinas.

AP
The party of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez faces real challenges by the opposition in six states on Sunday.
The old house is empty. Nothing about the unadorned, yellow single-story building suggests that the president spent part of his childhood there. Hugo de los Reyes Chavez, the president's father, has been the governor of the state of Barinas for the past decade. He ran for re-election four years ago under the slogan: "Vote for the father, because the son cannot deny him any request."
This is apparently true of the entire family. Since Hugo Chavez, a former paratrooper who later staged a military coup and is now the leader of the Latin American Left, was elected president in 1998, his once-humble mestizo family has become a wealthy clan. The Chavez family is believed to own 17 farms, several of them, as the opposition claims, acquired through straw men. "The Chavezes are the new oligarchs of Barinas," says Antonio Bastidas, a former neighbor and member of the opposition today.
FROM THE MAGAZINE
Find out how you can reprint this DER SPIEGEL article in your publication. Hugo de los Reyes Chavez, a former village teacher who is now called "El Maestro" in Barinas, has six sons, and all of them are extremely well provided for. Adelis is a vice president at Banco Sofitasa, which handles the business dealings of the Barinas government. Anibal is the mayor of Chavez's hometown of Sabaneta, Narciso heads the government's office of Venezuela-Cuban cooperation and Argenis is the head of his father's cabinet. Argenis became the de facto head of the family when "El Maestro" suffered a stroke a few years ago. Chavez's cousin Asdrubal is vice-president of the refinery business of the state-owned oil company, PDVSA.
Adan, the eldest of the Chavez brothers, has the reputation of being the family intellectual, and he has held posts as Venezuela's ambassador to Cuba and its education minister. Of all his brothers, Chavez trusts Adan the most, which is why he has now entrusted him with a delicate mission: Adan is running as a candidate to succeed his father in the gubernatorial election on Sunday. His task is to protect the president against the possibility of an ignominious defeat in the "Cradle of the Revolution," the term Chavez likes to use to describe his native state.
The regional elections will be the first trial of strength for the president since last year's failed constitutional referendum, with which autocratic leader Chavez had sought to secure for himself the possibility of unlimited re-election. According to opinion polls, six key states could go to the opposition in Sunday's vote.
Ironically, an effective opposition to the Comandante has developed among his own supporters, the "Chavistas," and some of the renegades are now running as independent candidates. In Barinas, for example, Adan Chavez is running neck-and-neck with the city's mayor, a former Chavez supporter. "We are tired of the nepotism in the president's family," says opposition candidate Simon Jimenez. "Chavez has established a new monarchy."
Barinas, as a microcosm of Venezuelan society, is the perfect place in which to study the rise and fall of the Caudillo. A four-lane highway leads to Sabaneta, his hometown, 60 kilometers (37 miles) from the provincial capital. There is no guardrail in the middle of the highway, because it doubles as a runway for Chavez's jet when he comes to visit Sabaneta.


AFP
Adan Chavez is Hugo's most trusted brother. He is now running to succeed his father as the governor of the state of Barinas on Sunday. Mayor Aníbal Chavez has had the street signs painted red, and the house where the president was born, now home to party offices, is painted pink. Many streets in this small, dusty city are unpaved, dotted with knee-deep puddles during heavy rains.
Hugo de los Reyes Chavez and his wife lived here with their two eldest sons until they moved to Barinas in the late 1960s. "Hugo, the second-born, was the most personable of the sons," says former neighbor Bastidas. "He was fascinated by weapons and interested in history."
Hugo Senior was a member of the Social Christian Party of Venezuela (COPEI), but his sons rebelled against what they dubbed "Venezuela's rotten elite" and the "party dictatorship," which they believed had dominated the country until Chavez's election victory in 1998. Doña Elena held the family together with an iron hand.
The village teacher and his wife were people of modest means. Today the governor's salary is a state secret, and Doña Elena makes no effort to hide her expensive taste in jewelry. Barinas is filled with rumors about how the clan came into its money. Two investigations into allegations of illegal enrichment are on hold with the district attorney's office.
Local residents are especially indignant over the story behind the La Carolina football stadium. It was supposed to be inaugurated during the Copa America South American football competition last year, but the structure is still under construction today. Only one match -- between the United States and Paraguay -- took place there, on the construction site and during the day, because the floodlights were missing. Adelis Chavez was in charge of financing for the mammoth project.
There are other tales of Chavez family corruption. The president has already dedicated the state-owned CAAEZ sugar refinery, a $100 million (€78 million) project near Sabaneta, three times, and yet construction is still only half-finished. Another story strikes a particularly sensitive note among the region's farmers, who used to grow corn and rice. Chavez convinced them to plant sugar cane instead, but now they are forced to burn half of their harvest because there is no plant to process the cane. "The president cheated the people," says David Hernandez, another former Chavez supporter.
The president and his family are not even popular among the residents of Sabaneta. Eight demonstrators and three police officers were injured there three weeks ago, when student protests turned violent. Hernandez, a dissident, was summoned by the secret police twice. He receives occasional death threats, and he is afraid to go out at night without bodyguards.
Chavez has never commented publicly on his clan's machinations, but he is believed to have complained at a family event about his relatives' undue enrichment. There are rumors in Barinas that he destroyed his brother Argenis's flashy Hummer with a baseball bat, and that their mother had to intervene.
Argenis was initially supposed to succeed his father as governor, but because he was involved in too many scandals, the president removed him from the line of fire. "Chavez doesn't want to risk his family's safety," says opposition candidate Jimenez.
Adan, the eldest, who is now running for governor, has been generous with his campaign gifts, hoping to bolster his prospects with voters despite everything. In a poor neighborhood in Barinas, Chavez supporters sell pork knuckles, refrigerators and other articles at artificially low prices. Venezuelan coffee -- "100 percent nacional" -- is especially popular at five Bolivar a pound. Coffee is scarce in supermarkets, a consequence of socialist mismanagement of the economy.
NEWSLETTER
Sign up for Spiegel Online's daily newsletter and get the best of Der Spiegel's and Spiegel Online's international coverage in your In- Box everyday.
Meanwhile Cuban doctors, sent to Venezuela by Fidel Castro in return for low-priced oil shipments, are writing prescriptions for free glasses and medications. "We are all voting for Adan," says Alberto Bueno, a carpenter standing in line for new glasses in the Mi Jardin II neighborhood.
The president's United Socialist Party of Venezuela has organized a "youth concert," to be held on playing fields on the city's outskirts. The audience is taken to the site in buses, but the venue is much too big.
Chavez's brother Adan waves to the audience, but refrains from giving a speech. The VIP stand where his parents are sitting is as red as the T-shirt his mother is wearing. Doña Elena looks determined, raising her fist in a gesture of defiance.
She plans to attend mass, as always, before the elections on Sunday. And she intends to pray for her sons.
Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan.

Treasure Targets Venezuelan - Washington DC

The US government is doing the right thing here. These Venezuelans were helping FARC that is a Colombian terrorist group. Actually where are the OAS - Organization of American States? Why they NEVER say something important, on favor of Justice, Human Rights violations, corruption, narcotraffics, etc. Sad.........

vdebate reporter

Treasury Targets Venezuelan Government Officials Supporting the FARC

Washington, DC

The U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of ForeignAssets Control (OFAC) today designated two senior Venezuelan governmentofficials, Hugo Armando Carvajal Barrios and Henry de Jesus Rangel Silva, andone former official, Ramon Rodriguez Chacin, for materially assisting thenarcotics trafficking activities of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia(FARC), a narco-terrorist organization.

"Today's designation exposes two senior Venezuelan government officials and one former official who armed, abetted, and funded the FARC, even as itterrorized and kidnapped innocents," said Adam J. Szubin, Director of OFAC."

This is OFAC's sixth action in the last ten months against the FARC.

We will continue to target and isolate those individuals and entities that aid the FARC's deadly narco-terrorist activities in the Americas."

Hugo Armando Carvajal Barrios is the Director of Venezuela's MilitaryIntelligence Directorate (DGIM). His assistance to the FARC includes protecting drug shipments from seizure by Venezuelan anti-narcotics authorities and providing weapons to the FARC, allowing them to maintain their strong hold of the coveted Arauca Department.

Arauca, which is located on theColombia/Venezuela border, is known for coca cultivation and cocaine production.

Carvajal Barrios also provides the FARC with official Venezuelan government identification documents that allow FARC members to travel to and from Venezuela with ease.

Henry de Jesus Rangel Silva, the Director of Venezuela's Directorate of Intelligence and Prevention Services or DISIP, is in charge of intelligence and counter intelligence activities for the Venezuelan government.

Rangel Silva has materially assisted the narcotics trafficking activities of the FARC. He has also pushed for greater cooperation between the Venezuelan government and theFARC.

Ramon Emilio Rodriguez Chacin, who was Venezuela's Minister of Interior andJustice until September 8, is the Venezuelan government's main weapons contact for the FARC. The FARC uses its proceeds from narcotics sales to purchase weapons from the Venezuelan government. Rodriguez Chacin has held numerous meetings with senior FARC members, one of which occurred atthe Venezuelan government's Miraflores Palace in late 2007.

Rodriguez Chacin has also assisted the FARC by trying to facilitate a $250 million dollar loan from the Venezuelan government to the FARC in late 2007.

We cannot confirmwhether the loan materialized.

On May 29, 2003, President George W. Bush identified the FARC as a significant foreign narcotics trafficker, or drug kingpin, pursuant to the KingpinAct.

In 2001, the State Department designated the FARC as a SpeciallyDesignated Global Terrorist pursuant to Executive Order 13224, and in 1997 asa Foreign Terrorist Organization.

This OFAC action continues ongoing efforts under the Kingpin Act to apply financial measures against significant foreign narcotics traffickers and their organizations worldwide.

In addition to the 75 drug kingpins that have been designated by the President, 460 businesses and individuals have been designated pursuant to the Kingpin Act since June 2000.

Today's action freezes any assets the designated entities and individuals may have under U.S. jurisdiction and prohibits U.S. persons from conducting financial or commercial transactions involving those assets.

Penalties for violations ofthe Kingpin Act range from civil penalties of up to $1,075,000 per violation tomore severe criminal penalties.

Criminal penalties for corporate officers mayinclude up to 30 years in prison and fines of up to $5,000,000. Criminal fines forcorporations may reach $10,000,000.

Other individuals face up to 10 years inprison for criminal violations of the Kingpin Act and fines pursuant to Title 18 of the United States Code.For a complete list of the individuals and entities designated today, please visit:

http://www.treasury.gov/offices/enforcement/ofac/actions/index.shtml

To view previous OFAC actions directed against the FARC, please visit:

Treasury Action against the FARC on July 31, 2008

(link:http://www.treas/.gov/press/ releases/ hp1096.htm)

Treasury Action against the FARC on May 7, 2008

(link:http://www.treas/. gov/press/ releases/ hp966.htm)

Treasury Action against the FARC on April 22, 2008

(link:http://www.treas/. gov/press/ releases/ hp938.htm)

Treasury Action against the FARC on January 15, 2008

(link:http://www.treas/. gov/press/ releases/ hp762.htm)

Treasury Action against the FARC on November 1, 2007

(link:http://www.treas/. gov/press/ releases/ hp661.htm)

Treasury Action against the FARC on September 28, 2006

(link:http://www.treas/. gov/press/ releases/ hp119.htm)

Treasury Action against the FARC on February 19, 2004

(link:http://www.ustreas/. gov/press/ releases/ js1181.htm)