By Luis Manuel Aguana
Two aspects stand out from the
sentence of Nicolás Maduro Moros published on Monday, October 29 by the Supreme
Court of Justice in exile: a) the reliable demonstration that Maduro
appropriated 35 million dollars in favor of his electoral campaign for the
presidency of the Republic in 2013; and b) the ratification of the
"institutional vacuum" of power that exists in Venezuela as a
consequence of that. Since the publication of that ruling, it has become
official that there is no government in Venezuela that can be recognized as
legitimate by anyone in the world.
From the accusation of the Attorney
General of the Republic: "NICOLÁS
MADURO asked Odebrecht for an amount of money to finance his campaign, in
exchange for favoring the company in future contracts and payments. It is known
that as a result of this petition, it received the amount of 35 million
dollars, which were deposited in foreign accounts, simulating the payment of
claims resulting from fictitious contracts between mercantile companies", came
the ruling of the legitimate Supreme Court of Justice: "FIRST: Of the body of evidence incorporated into the file through
oral and public hearings, there is sufficient evidence of the commission of the
punishable acts that are the object of the trial and a causal relationship that
reliably demonstrates the culpability and criminal responsibility of Nicolás
Maduro Moros, in the perpetration of the crimes of Own Corruption and Money
Laundering, provided for and sanctioned in Articles 64 and 35 of the Law
Against Corruption and the Organic Law against Organized Crime and Financing of
Terrorism, respectively” (see in Spanish Documento de la sentencia
en el Twitter Oficial del TSJ legitimo en, https://twitter.com/TSJ_Legitimo/status/1056859165187076096?s=03, pages 9 and 149).
This sentence reminded me of what Eliot Ness and his
Untouchables did on October 24, 1931 against gangster Al Capone, who was
sentenced to 11 years in prison and $50,000 fine for tax fraud. In other words,
the only thing they could prove to a murderer who terrorized the prohibition
era in the United States to send him to prison was a tax fraud for pennies.
And that's what Maduro's sentence really looks like,
after the regime's mafiosi and the Brazilian construction company Odebrech
defrauded the nation of more than 35 billion dollars in paid and unexecuted
works, 35 million dollars doesn't even reach the tip of the feast servers who
gave themselves with Venezuelan money. In other words, they condemned him for
having charged approximately 0.1% of what they took! Much less the tip of a
waiter in a restaurant. What a miserable tip!
What about the rest? Because if Odebrecht charged
without executing the construction works and at least 50% of the booty was
distributed, there would still be `to process those who took not less than 17.5
billion dollars, with the business of that construction company alone. And all
this without the Bs. 2,082,116,226,489.15 corresponding to the Tocoma
Hydroelectric Plant, which they also collected and did not execute: "The Court was able to verify the
amounts paid by the National Government to the Odebrecht company through
accounting expertise incorporated by reading it, from which the work is derived
and the amount of money paid" (see table of works and their amounts on
pages 138 and 139 of the sentence).
The list of works is painful and explains in good part
the crisis we are living through: Line 5 of the Caracas Metro, the
Caracas-Guarenas-Guatire, Massive Transport System, Mariche Metro Cable,
Cabletren Bolivariano, El Sistema Vial III Puente sobre el Rio Orinoco, Puente
Cacique Nigale (known as the second bridge over Lake Maracaibo), Project for
the recovery of the main runway at Maiquetía Airport, Tocoma Hydroelectric
Power Station, José Ignacio Abreu Agrarian Project in Anzoátegui, La Dolorita
Metro Cable, Caracas-La Guaira-Guatire Railway. All these works were paid for
without being built, causing impressive collateral damage: "...important labor liabilities were generated, thousands were
left unemployed or underemployed, and a large part of the productive apparatus
(suppliers of materials, equipment, inputs, raw materials, etc.) that grew at
the same time as these failed projects, frustrated their possibilities of
growth and operability, attesting an important blow to the economic development
opportunities of the country" (page 139).
I would dare to say that it was business to pay
Nicolás Maduro Moros that 0.1% tip if Odebrecht had been assured that it would
conclude these works in favor of the Nation. I think we Venezuelans would have
been happy to pay for them! But that is precisely the problem. We place
incalculable wealth in the hands of anyone and without control, and we candidly
hope that it will not be stolen and that it will be applied in favor of the
collective. And without having learned anything, the intention is again to do
exactly the same thing with another election of president after the fall of
this satrap, without proposing a constituent discussion of the political system
and changing the constitutional rules that give all that power to the President
of the Republic. That is why, like Capone, Maduro had to be condemned for
pennies, even if it was more than enough to get him out of the Presidency of
the Republic.
But where the importance of this document really
resides is in the formalization of the Absolute Fault of the President of the
Republic. 35 million dollars are a gift that justifies his departure for all
the damage he has comparatively done to Venezuela and that officially justifies
the immediate appointment of a National Emergency Government.
The National Assembly can no longer hide behind its
Legal Consultancy alleging that there was no final sentence. Since Monday,
October 29, 2018, there has been one. The parties of the Board of Directors of
the National Assembly can no longer claim that Nicolás Maduro Moros is
President until January 10, 2019. No. He was no longer President since January
9, 2017, and when they did not carry out the constitutional procedure to
replace him, they left the case in institutional limbo. And as of today he is
not officially President but a convict with a prison sentence. Already the
governments of the whole world must ignore it.
Well, now is the time to appoint
another President now because the person who holds the post in Miraflores must
be arrested and transferred to Ramo Verde to serve a sentence for corruption
and money laundering, according to that sentence. And the fact that Maduro is
not arrested is not valid here. That is the responsibility of the State's
security forces. And it is up to everyone to fulfil their part of the
responsibility. It is up to the Assembly to appoint a new President. And if
they do not do so for whatever reasons, the same High Court that issued that
ruling will then have the obligation to decide within the framework of Articles
333 and 350 of the Constitution. The time has come for great decisions for
everyone. The time has come to fill a power vacuum that gave us a small tip of
35 million dollars...
Caracas, October 30, 2018
Email: luismanuel.aguana@gmail.com
Twitter:@laguana
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