LatinNews Daily - 10 April 2024

*Venezuela’s Attorney General (AG) Tarek William Saab has announced the arrest of former oil minister, Tareck El Aissami (2020-2023) as part of a corruption probe into the state oil company Petróleos de Venezuela (Pdvsa). A former finance minister, Simón Zerpa, and a businessman, Samark José López Bello, were arrested alongside El Aissami, who also served as vice president from 2017-2018. Saab stated that El Aissami, Zerpa, and López are facing charges of treason, appropriation or diversion of public assets, influence peddling, money laundering, and criminal association. Saab thanked Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro for his “unconditional support” for the investigation, which he said had managed to “detect and dismantle a network of officials who used their positions to carry out illegal oil operations”. Saab stated that this network received the profits from crude oil sales and traded those sums of money in different foreign currencies, bypassing the central bank. He also said that El Aissami negotiated the sale of oil for below market value, generating losses to the Venezuelan State. According to the AG, shell companies were set up to issue inflated invoices for services and share the profits, while a special office was also created to fabricate the accounts and circumvent financial audits. Saab stated that the money from these operations was used to acquire movable and immovable property, digital currencies, and cryptocurrency mining farms. According to the AG, 54 people have been charged in relation to the investigation. El Aissami resigned as oil minister on 20 March 2023, shortly after the national police announced that it suspected “serious acts of administrative corruption and embezzlement” in Venezuela’s oil industry.