The amount of money that the regime that Hugo Chávez Frías and Nicolás Maduro Moros have managed and embezzled from the Venezuelan people's accounts will never be known until the criminals that manage power in Venezuela are expelled, and a deep audit is carried out, as in any private or public administration that respects itself, and the corresponding full responsibilities are established.
Never was the phrase of former Venezuelan President Raimundo Andueza Palacios (1846-1900) truer than now, who said, and I quote: "The National Treasury is like the Guaire River, everyone has the right to put their pichagua, what is discussed is the size". The word "pichagua", very Venezuelan, is a derivative of the famous indigenous "totuma" or "tapara" used to collect water or plate to eat.
According to this way of conceiving the public treasury, all Venezuelans have the right, according to Andueza, to dip into the public money, and what is being discussed is the size of the container, because the Guaire River gave enough water for everyone. The question was who had more right than others to drink more. The answer: the one who had the biggest pichagua. And that is usually the one with the power. And the latter, especially the thousands of thieves in this Ali Baba's cave that Venezuela has become, have taken it very seriously.
But the matter has reached such an extreme that the thieves left the river dry, and not even President Andueza, author of the sadly famous phrase, could ever imagine that they would go to the extreme of doing so, and upon drying it up, the thieves would start stealing from each other.
The scandal of the regime regarding the diversion of 3 billion dollars from the accounts coming from the sale of oil, denominated in cryptocurrencies, used by the regime to divert the financial sanctions imposed by the United States government against the red-red PDVSA, is an interesting case to analyze, from several perspectives, which denote the fracture of the power structure that exists in Venezuela and of which we have been victims for more than 23 years.
According to the official version, the National Superintendence of Crypto-assets and Related Activities, headed by an official named Joselit Ramírez, was discovered in an operation of diversion of funds "so as not to appear in the official accounts of the Venezuelan government". Consequently, "Joselit Ramírez was arrested by the National Anticorruption Police after the issuance of a request for judicial proceedings against "a number of citizens who could be involved in serious acts of administrative corruption and embezzlement...". (see Joselit Ramírez, Venezuela's Top Cryptocurrency Authority, is Removed from Office and Arrested, in https://decrypt.co/es/123951/destituyen-joselit-ramirez-criptomonedas-sunacript-venezuela).
The most interesting thing about this is that unofficially the news circulating in the social networks is that the now former National Superintendent of Crypto-assets and Related Activities is closely linked to Tareck El Aissami, Sectoral Vice-President of Economy and current Minister of the People's Power of Petroleum.
And the question everyone asked was whether this mid-level official was capable of making this diversion of funds on his own, without the consent of someone of a higher political level such as Tareck El Aissami, who in turn was his superior during his term in the Executive Vice-Presidency of the Republic, when Ramírez served as his Director General, a position of extreme trust. And the answer is the obvious: NO. And that is why El Aissami resigned from his position as Minister of Petroleum (see in Spanish Venezuela: Nicolás Maduro accepts Tareck El Aissami's resignation, at https://www.dw.com/es/venezuela-nicol%C3%A1s-maduro-acepta-la-renuncia-de-tareck-el-aissami/a-65055225).
But what about the money? Well, thank you, gone. And that is probably the fate of all the money that comes by that same route to the regime's coffers, since cryptocurrencies have absolutely no bank backing, and disappear easily as a result of computer fraud and the action of specialized hackers, even more so if they operate among mafias. Hence, the structure on which the regime's financing is based on this type of assets, used to escape sanctions, is extremely weak, especially since Russia is at war with Ukraine and many of its important accounts resided in Russian banks and were frozen.
The network of accounts in cryptocurrency wallets of the regime has been compromised with this billionaire robbery, so it would not be strange at all if we continue to see new arrests, but they will hardly return the funds that actually belong to Venezuelans. They will have been transferred to countless virtual wallets in cyberspace of the band of thieves who have robbed the National Treasury, thus updating the famous pichagua of Andueza Palacios.
But the saddest part of this situation and what leaves me in absolute amazement is that Venezuelans have lost with the corruption of Castro-Chavismo-Madurismo the very notion of the magnitude of the theft that continues to be done to us from the heights of power.
Some have already mentioned that the amount of dollars that originated the persecution within the regime is a minutiae compared to what they have taken in 23 years, and that is true. But in this sense, I wish to point out that if Tareck El Aissami is at the head of this conspiracy that took away 3 billion dollars, then he is the holder of the same approximate fortune that Donald Trump, the billionaire former president of the United States, possesses, calculated at the end of 2022, at 3.2 billion dollars, according to Forbes Magazine (see Donald Trump's net fortune at the end of 2022, according to Forbes, in https://www.forbes.com/profile/donald-trump/?sh=4164da4e47bd).
If a person like Donald Trump has the power he has in the U.S. with that fortune to become president of that country again, what can we say about someone who has that same money in Venezuela? Not only will he be able to buy a position, such as the Presidency of the Republic, but he will be able to selectively remove those who wish to prevent him from doing so.
Este personaje a quien acusan de llevarse una fortuna semejante a la de Donald Trump, y al que desde ya podríamos llamar sin lugar a dudas, “Donald” El Aissami, en el año 2017 era señalado por el Director Ejecutivo del Centro de Seguridad para una Sociedad Libre y Segura, Joseph Humire, como el responsable de Hezbolá en Venezuela, indicando en ese momento que: “…through his work as Venezuela’s minister of interior and justice from 2008 to 2012, Aissami rendered the South American country a state-sponsor of “cover and concealment of Middle Eastern operatives” by establishing an immigration system that allows Hezbollah militants to travel with official Venezuelan identities. As minister of the interior, the president charged Aissami with designing “an immigration scheme with Cuba, with Iran, and other countries in the Middle East” to be able to funnel drugs, individuals, and money “back and forth to the Middle East,” the expert said. He added, “He was able to create identities for individuals from Lebanon, from Syria, from Iraq, and other places in the Middle East — largely places where Hezbollah operates — and he was able to give them a presence in Venezuela when in many cases these individuals never even visited Venezuela” (see Venezuela’s Hezbollah-Linked, ‘Drug Kingpin’ VP ‘Runs the Country’, in https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2018/04/20/expert-venezuela-hezbollah-linked-drug-kingpin-vice-president-runs-the-country/).
According to international analyst Carlos Alberto Montaner, El Aissami was imposed by the then President of Iran Hassan Rouani during his official visit, in a version according to which that country would finance Maduro's disaster in exchange for this character to be in the line of succession of power in Venezuela, of course in the care of Iran's interests in our country (see in Spanish Maduro flees forward by the hand of Tareck El Aissami, in https://www.elnuevoherald.com/opinion-es/opin-col-blogs/carlos-alberto-montaner/article124976799.html).
So it is not only that "Donald" El Aissami has obtained the necessary money, as the rest of those who unfortunately hold power may have obtained it, but also that internationally there is the suspicion that he is the agent of a country that is practically at war with the United States, interested in getting its hands on Venezuela. It is not only a matter of corruption, but of geopolitics and regional security.
The fact that no one seems to notice, is that at these levels no actor of weight takes a step of such magnitude as appropriating such a fortune without a higher purpose and firmly supported. And it is not just that the regime is imploding and its heads are stealing from each other, but that the game is who has the conditions to stay standing after a fight like the one that has begun. Someone like "Donald" El Aissami after that fortune has them. I hope that Venezuelans take this into account, for their information and consequent purposes...
Caracas, March 21, 2023
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TIC’s & Derechos Humanos, https://ticsddhh.blogspot.com/
Email: luismanuel.aguana@gmail.com
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