PDVSA worker jailed for corruption

Dr. Evil voice: Ten thoooooousand bolivars

The crackdown is here! Maduro is serious about the war on corruption. Venezuela news aggregator Etorno Inteligente reports (my translation):

The attorney general jailed engineer Milton Ramón Caldera Rodríguez, apprehended November 5 2013 for allegedly soliciting 18,000 bolivars and approving a security performance evaluation for the company Hidrolab Toro Consultores CA, service provider to Petroleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA)…

The judge sentenced Caldera to imprisonment at the police station … of Barinas….

On Tuesday, October 30, 2013, the PDVSA engineer may have solicited the amount of 18,000 bolivars from a representative of Hidrolab Toro Consultores CA in order to approve a security performance evaluation. …The company complained to the Servicio Bolivariano de Inteligencia Nacional (Sebin).

On November 5 … Caldera was called to the Altos Barinas hotel where the money was handed over. After receiving the money he was detained by Sebin officers…

18,000 bolivars. The current parallel rate in Venezuela is 55 bolivars to the dollar, even though the government has resorted to its most overt Great Firewall type tactics ever to keep people from knowing that.*

This engineer was detained for demanding a bribe of US$327.27.

Or to put it in upper middle class purchasing power terms, that would buy the engineer a nice steak dinner out for a family of four (3,000), a large Christmas tree (3,000), an off-brand polo shirt (1,100), a Samsung Galaxy S I9000 (3,500) and a new bumper for a Toyota 4×4 (8,000).

Or in even simpler terms: less than the price of a new IPhone 4S.

So please remember that, PDVSA workers. You can’t go demanding bribes. You need to wait for the vendor to suggest it to you.

* Yes, Dolar Today is being blocked by all ISPs, as is the Twitter link-shortener bit.ly. as the brainiac Cuban, Iranian or Chinese people running the country’s censorship program don’t realize that Dolar Today uses goo.gl and that blocking bit.ly just cuts people off from everything else.

Chavista Freddy Bernal calls for investigation of Derwick Associates

Original, with full context, here. Short version: TV host Vladimir Villegas is pressing Venezuelan pro-government deputy Freddy Bernal for specific examples of companies or people who may have stolen from the country.

Text:

Freddy Bernal: En esta concierto para delinquir, hay empresas por ejemplo una empresa denominada Derwick. No sé quien será el dueño. Derwick. Esa empresa contratada con el estado.

Vladimir Villegas: Empresa venezolana.

Bernal: Sí, empresa venezolana. Y esa empresa compro, nada más y nada menos, que en Nueva York, el apartamento de Aristóteles Onassis. Bueno, yo creo que, creo que vale la pena investigar un caso de esas características.

Translation:

Freddy Bernal: In this symphony of crime, there are companies like, for example, a company called Derwick. I don’t know who would be the owner. Derwick. A company with state contracts.

Vladimir Villegas: A Venezuelan company.

Bernal: Yeah, a Venezuelan company. And this company bought, in New York, nothing less than the apartment of Aristotle Onassis. Well I think, I think it’s worth the trouble to investigate a case with these characteristics.

Next time that Derwick Associates deigns to accuse me and other reporters of being “agents” in a “defamation campaign,” I hope they also include Mr. Bernal. Just for consistency.

The irony here is really thick. Bernal is citing information first posted on Alek Boyd’s Infodio website. In case you haven’t noticed, Boyd is a passionate anti-Chavista, while Bernal — one-time head of the Caracas police, mayor of Caracas, defense minister of Venezuela, and resident of the US’s drug kingpin list — is one of the most recognized Chavistas. Strange bedfellows. (Corrected: I had the guy confused with a different alleged drug kingpin. Bernal wasn’t defense minister.)

SEC finds scheme to rob Venezuelan people, misuses term “massive”

The SEC charged bond traders with running a bunch of fake trades to get commissions and rob the Venezuelan people. The take was, as usual, shared with the revolutionary people’s power executives charged with protecting the pueblo, and as usual, the officials in charge will be protected. (Thanks to commenter Jau for pointing this out.)

Anyway it’s an interesting read. It starts:

Washington, D.C., May 6, 2013 — The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged four individuals with ties to a New York City brokerage firm in a scheme involving millions of dollars in illicit bribes paid to a high-ranking Venezuelan finance official to secure the bond trading business of a state-owned Venezuelan bank.

According to the SEC’s complaint filed in federal court in Manhattan, the global markets group at broker-dealer Direct Access Partners (DAP) executed fixed income trades for customers in foreign sovereign debt. DAP Global generated more than $66 million in revenue for DAP from transaction fees – in the form of markups and markdowns – on riskless principal trade executions in Venezuelan sovereign or state-sponsored bonds for Banco de Desarrollo Económico y Social de Venezuela (BANDES). A portion of this revenue was illicitly paid to BANDES Vice President of Finance, María de los Ángeles González de Hernandez, who authorized the fraudulent trades.

The annoying thing about the situation is that the SEC calls this a “massive kickback scheme.” They are talking about a country where quite likely billions of dollars a year are taken in kickback schemes. Sadly, $60 million is a drop in the Venezuelan bucket.

And since nobody else seems to have mentioned it in English, yes, that’s the same BANDES that employed Alejandro Andrade as president during this same period. (H/T Corina.) Unreliable, unsourced reports said Andrade is “behind” the recent purchase of Globovisión, Venezuela’s most politically conservative television station, but I don’t have any evidence that this is so.

OLD: Univision links Rafael Ramírez to possible money laundering, coverup

I tried to dig into this story a couple years ago, but nobody would tell me who was the high-level Venezuelan official who had supposedly supplied the funds. Without that info, it wasn’t so interesting. With that info, well, it is interesting. If you speak Spanish, watch the following.

Obviously, Ramírez himself hasn’t had a chance to comment on this story, so please withhold judgment. You never know, maybe he was buying a house in Switzerland, and needed to transfer the money via a lawyer through the USA…oh screw it, never mind. He’s going to have to come up with his own explanations.

(I’m losing my touch. This story was from 2011, and I just saw it retweeted from these black market dollar traders. Sorry. Leaving it here cause it’s interesting, but it’s not new.)

How the developing world could recover money lost to corruption

This is fascinating. What if governments around the world took this tack, suing the companies that bribed their officials? Could be a great way to get back some of their losses.

Petroleos Mexicanos, Mexico’s state- owned oil company, filed a $1.5 billion lawsuit against Siemens AG (SIE) and South Korea-based SK Engineering & Construction Co., claiming the companies bribed Pemex officials to win and keep refinery construction projects.
Siemens, which in 2008 paid $1.6 billion to settle a bribery investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, conspired with SK Engineering and a joint venture partner to bribe Pemex officials while bidding on a refinery modernization project in Mexico’s Cadereyta region, the oil company alleged in a complaint filed yesterday in Manhattan federal court.
The contract was awarded to the joint venture in 1997, according to the complaint. The defendants later bribed Pemex officials to keep the contract, when the project was plagued by cost overruns and disputes over the work, according to Pemex.
“Plaintiffs suffered millions of dollars of harm from the selection of an inadequate contractor, the acceptance of harmful contractual terms, and the acceptance of significant cost overruns,” Pemex said in the complaint.

More here.