Tareck El Aissami, former Minister of Oil in Venezuela, arrested

Caracas. The attorney general of Venezuela announced on Tuesday that former Oil Minister Tareck El Aissami was arrested more than a year after his resignation following the arrest of several officials linked to strategic sectors, including the state corporation Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA). ).

El Aissami would be linked to a million-dollar corruption plot initially focused on PDVSA and that would have extended to other state companies.

In March 2023, El Aissami resigned from his position, arguing that he was doing so by virtue of the investigations “that have been initiated into serious acts of corruption in PDVSA” and with the objective of “supporting, accompanying and fully backing this process.” Since then his whereabouts were unknown.

El Aissami, 49, has also since then offered his position in the leadership of the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV).

El Aissami, also former president of PDVSA, was detained to be presented and charged in the next few hours, indicated Attorney General Tarek William Saab in a statement to the press, without mentioning the exact date of his capture.

The Ministry of Communications released images of Tareck El Aissami handcuffed and walking down a hallway flanked by agents.

The attorney general told reporters that El Aissami’s arrest took time due to the various steps of the investigation.

Based on recent denunciations of at least five protected witnesses – whose identity was not revealed – Simón Alejandro Zerpa, former Minister of Economy and Finance and former president of the National Development Fund (Fonden), a state company created in 2005 with the objective of financing large-scale investment projects, paying external public debt and addressing other special situations.

“Using their positions, they diverted State funds through supposed suppliers of briefcase companies who did not meet the requirements to contract with the State, obviously causing incalculable property damage in millions of dollars,” the attorney general said.

Businessman Samark José López directly linked to El Aissami and Zerpa was also captured.

“This network used an entire conglomerate of commercial companies to legitimize the money obtained from said sales through the acquisition of cryptoassets,” which were then used to obtain goods and real estate and invest them, particularly in the construction sector.

Those arrested will be charged with the crimes of treason, appropriation or distraction of public assets, money laundering and criminal association.

The Public Ministry indicated that 54 people are detained in relation to the case and arrest warrants are pending for another 17.

All those investigated are related to the National Superintendence of Cryptoactives, where the Prosecutor’s Office detected a network of officials who, using their positions and levels of authority, would have carried out parallel commercial operations in PDVSA, Cartones de Venezuela and the Venezuelan Corporation of Guayana . The latter is in charge of managing a group of steel companies and iron, bauxite, gold and diamond resources, among others.

“These operations involved three key institutions of the Venezuelan nation that at the time controlled El Aissami: Petróleos de Venezuela, the Superintendency of Cryptoactives and the Venezuelan Corporation of Guayana,” Saab highlighted.

El Aissami – who was sanctioned by the United States as an alleged drug kingpin – experienced a rapid rise in power over the last two decades that led him to occupy several of the most important positions in the security and economic areas of the deceased’s government. president Hugo Chávez and his successor and current president Nicolás Maduro.

He held the Ministry of Interior Relations during Chávez’s mandate (1999-2013) and was appointed by Maduro as Minister of Petroleum in April 2020. He had just served as vice president of the republic under the mandate of Chávez’s successor.

Washington’s accusations against El Aissami did not dent his career. On the contrary, he was classified as a hero by the ruling party. But the arrest of several of his loved ones dragged him into the eye of the hurricane.

In difficult times, he was commissioned to design the framework with which to circumvent Washington’s sanctions to prevent the Maduro administration from carrying out financial and commercial transactions abroad, by freezing Venezuela’s international assets and prohibiting Americans and their partners. international to do business with Caracas.