Hugo Chavez’s ex-nurse prosecuted in US for cash laundering

Hugo Chávez’s previous nurse has actually been billed with cash laundering in a Miami government court accused of taking allurements from a billionaire media mogul to thumbs-up lucrative currency purchases when she acted as Venezuela’s nationwide treasurer.

Claudia Díaz as well as her spouse, Adrían Velasquez, were accused of taking at least $4.2 million in promotion of the bribery scheme, according to the charges presented Friday. The repayments originated from business and also bank accounts situated in Switzerland to the pair’s accounts in Miami.

Behind the payments, according to district attorneys, was business person Raúl Gorrín, proprietor of the country’s last significant personal TV network, Globovisión. Gorrin gets on the U.S. Immigration and also Customs Enforcement’s most-wanted listing after being charged for his claimed function in a $2.4 billion cash laundering conspiracy theory in 2017. His TV network is under U.S. sanctions for its claimed duty propping up the socialist government of Chávez’s follower, Nicolás Maduro.

Díaz, 46, was a previous petty police officer in Venezuela’s navy that cared for an ailing Chávez prior to the Venezuelan leader passed away of cancer cells in 2013. In 2011, Chávez called her Venezuela’s national treasurer. She was replaced when Maduro was chosen in 2013.

Díaz and her partner, a previous safety and security advisor to Chávez, presently stay in Madrid, where they were briefly arrested in 2018 on a Venezuelan warrant. Spain’s supreme court turned down Venezuela’s extradition demand, discovering the couple could be hurt if they return home.

U.S. district attorneys have actually billed lots of Maduro-connected authorities as well as business owners as part of a project to root out corruption afflicting the oil-rich South American nation. As much as $300 billion is approximated to have been raided from Venezuela’s state coffers in two decades of socialist rule.

It was not right away feasible to communicate with Díaz. But in August her Madrid legal representative, Ismael Oliver, rejected the couple had actually made money from their settings in power.

Díaz did well Alejandro Andrade as Venezuela’s treasurer in 2011. In what is the most significant judgment against a previous Venezuelan to day, Andrade in 2018 accepted forfeit more than $1 billion in proceeds he acknowledged getting in return for approving financially rewarding currency deals. The arrangement, presumably promoted by Gorrín and also others, continued when Díaz took his place.

Stiff currency controls in position in Venezuela for over a years have been a significant motorist of graft, enabling a fortunate few to acquire hard cash from the federal government at the misestimated authorities currency exchange rate as well as market on the underground market for big profits.

Díaz and her hubby have lengthy struggled to explain their bountiful riches. In 2014, a firm developed in the Caribbean island nation of St. Vincent as well as the Grenadines that she apparently managed bought 250 gold bars valued at more than $9.5 million, according to court documents from Liechtenstein gotten by The Associated Press.

Benches, evaluating a kg (2.2 extra pounds) each, were stored at a private vault in the small European principality readily available to Díaz as well as her child after his 18th birthday celebration. A few years later, a virtually identical amount of bullion was sold by an agent of Díaz, with much of the profits deposited right into a Swiss bank.

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