How Chavismo wasted 28 billion USD of oil to buy votes from 14 countries

Venezuela's socialist regime – the country with the largest oil reserves in the world – diverted the natural resources of the Venezuelan people to buy the voices of at least 14 countries of Central America and the Caribbean in international forumsSuch as the Organization of American States (OAS) and the United Nations (UN) have recently revealed #Petrofraude, A rigorous research conducted by the Latin American journalism platform Connectas, in partnership with four media in the region.

The purchase of votes took place in exchange for the sale of Venezuelan oil at a subsidized price under the Petrocaribe agreement, a regional alliance created by Hugo Chávez in 2005 and maintained by his successor, Nicolás Maduro. "The key to international support still available to the Nicolás Maduro regime in Venezuela, which helps to avoid complete isolation, has its own name: Petrocaribe"says the report.

The agreement on energy, which allowed billions of barrels of oil to be sold at bid prices – or against goods and services – to at least 14 countries in Central and South America. Caribbean, was supposed to fight against social inequalities in societies. Latin American women, to make them more just and more supportive. In the words of Chávez himself, Venezuela's help should "strengthen the rights of the people of the recipient countries, help to" overcome poverty "and guarantee" the availability and accessibility to health, to education and microfinance "cooperatives, small and medium enterprises", among other objectives.

Between 2006 and 2016, the Chavez regime injected more than 346.31 million barrels of oil, or 25,000 million USD, in the region where it was created: Petrocaribe. "The big volumes of Venezuelan oil were exchanged for food, on the one hand and against loans contracted within a maximum period of 25 years, at rates not exceeding 2.5% per year", specified l & # 39; investigation.

These deferred payments cost Venezuela an average revenue loss of $ 2,300 million a year between 2011 and 2013. It is therefore not surprising that the debt to Venezuela peaked the following year: "Venezuela's oil financing to Central American and Caribbean countries reached its peak in 2014 when 14 countries in the region, including some of the smallest, least populated and with the rarest resources on the continent, owed more than $ 14,800 million. dollars to the South American nation", discovered #Petrofraude on the basis of management balances of Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA)." The Dominican Republic and Jamaica, which together accounted for almost half of the debts, renegotiated in 2015, which allowed them to cancel your debts with payment of less than 50 percent of what is due"

The money saved by the recipient countries should be used for different social purposes, such as health, education, beach cleaning and energy subsidies. However, The investigation on #Petrofraude shows that these objectives were not achieved. Venezuela did not care either because, from the beginning, its purpose was another: to provide diplomatic support in international fora and to seek the regional expansion of Bolivarian socialism. "Fund management (…) is done in an environment of opacity with regard to the controls applied inside and outside the designed platform. for the money to circulate, which facilitated the emergence of diversion of resources which has benefited the consolidation of other political regimes that are now the subject of news, as in the case ofRteguismo in Nicaragua", say the researchers.

The first geopolitical "ring of protection" of Venezuela

In 2015, the Venezuelan Ministry of Foreign Affairs defined the Petrocaribe member countries as part of the "first ring" of "geopolitical protection" aimed at "defending Venezuela's sovereignty" in international fora. This is explained by the strong coincidence of Venezuela's votes with the Organization of American States (OAS) and those of recipient countries with Petrocaribe.

"In light of the inventory conducted by #Petrofraud, the diplomacy of Nicaragua, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and Dominica appears to be the most consistent in the support line, "according to reports from more 800 minutes of General Assemblies, Permanent Councils and Meetings of OAS Foreign Ministers. "The block of those who "aligned themselves" with Venezuela's tour regime also includes countries such as Antigua and Barbuda, Belize and Grenada, among others, which, despite their very small territory and low population, have voices of equal value in different international forumsin particular to the OAS, where the "protective crown" of Venezuela's governments has fully complied with its objective. "

Rafael Ramírez, former oil minister, former president of PDVSA and one of the promoters of the agreements while he was in the service of Chávez, confessed to the journalists of #Petrofraude that the agreement on the energy he had no social but geopolitical purpose"We turned to our natural geopolitical space, we adopted a differentiated policy for small towns, very small islands, but in the end, they are sovereign countries, what gave us an extraordinary geopolitical presence? " Yes of course. Why will not we do it if all countries do it? The United States does it, the English do it, the Mexicans do it, "said Ramirez.

However, Petrocaribe's resources had much more opaque destinations than those defended by the former manager, who is now the subject of a judicial investigation after a fierce confrontation with Maduro. In Haiti, after the earthquake of January 7, 2010 of 7 degrees of magnitude that caused the death of 300,000 people, the Venezuelan government has budgeted more than 2 100 million USD to help rebuild the country.. Haiti created a special fund with the surplus resources that it had access through the program. Supposedly, it was intended for infrastructure work and for social purposes. But successive surveys have shown that a good deal of this money had gone into private pockets.

In June 2018, Dominican Senator Felix Bautista was sanctioned by the United States Treasury Department under the Magnitsky Global Law for Money Laundering alleged Petrocaribe. Its companies were among the most favored with contracts for the reconstruction of Haiti and, according to the documentation examined in the case, they were also part of complex financial movements from which contributions to electoral campaigns and political figures from various countries.

Money laundering and corruption

Another way of Corruption more generalized that the denounced report is practiced through additional cost in the compensation system that some countries have signed with Venezuela the system in which they pay part of their debts with food products. "Venezuela has paid in many cases poor quality products, well above international prices, which would cost high-end products," notes #Petrofraude.

One case to observe is the purchase of cattle and coffee Nicaragua Between 2009 and 2013, #Petrofraude documented payments exceeding EUR 145 million at buying coffee of dubious quality in Nicaragua. Federico Argüello, president of the Coffee Exporters Association of Nicaragua, confirmed that the Venezuelan market "was paying a higher differential than New York." For its part, livestock meat was purchased at around USD 5,690 per tonne, while in the last 20 years, the best export averages had not exceeded USD 5,000 , according to official data of the Nicaraguan government.

The same dynamics occurred in Guyana, where, for six years, more than one million tons of White rice for Venezuela in exchange for oil loans. In 2010, for example, Caracas accepted the $ 700 per tonne, while buyers from the European Union have acquired the same amount for an average of 476 USD. In the face of such awards, a 2016 Inter-American Development Bank report concluded that the main motive for commercial operations between the two countries "does not appear to be economic", suggesting that the greatest advantage has been achieved in the diplomatic field. .

Meanwhile, the Venezuelan people are suffering from biggest humanitarian crisis in its history, with shortages of food, medicine and basic resources that the Chavista regime had taken for granted for years while oil prices remained high. To the extent that the flow of funds from Caracas with the fall in oil prices is reduced, the links between Petrocaribe are becoming weaker and the complete isolation of Venezuela is more likely.