Finally, and after more than a year after leaving the position of Minister of Petroleum and president of the Venezuelan state crude oil company Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), Tareck El Aissami was arrested and put behind bars.
“We have managed to reveal the direct participation and therefore their consequent arrest, of the following subjects: Tareck El Aissami, former Minister of Petroleum and former president of PDVSA; Samark José Lopez, money legitimizer, and Simón Alejandro Zerpa, former Minister of Economy and Finance,” announced this Tuesday the Attorney General, Tarek William Saab.
The official added that everything happened after several defendants became protected witnesses and informers.
El Aissami, who was also Minister of the Interior, Industries and Vice President of Nicolás Madurohad disappeared from the public eye in March 2023 amid a corruption scandal for the alleged embezzlement of billions of dollars with cryptocurrencies.
The organization Transparencia Venezuela estimates the amount in 16 billion dollarsalthough the Prosecutor’s Office has not confirmed that this is the amount.
The Prosecutor stated that, in parallel to the corruption plot, the detainees supposedly managed a prostitution ring.
Saab presented photographs of the moment of El Aissami’s arrest although he did not report when it occurred or his place of detention. Furthermore, he announced that he will be charged with the crimes of betrayal of the countryappropriation or distraction of public assets, launderingboasting or availing of relationships or influences and association to commit a crime.
Photo: EFE
The Prosecutor totaled in 54 arrests so far in this case, including senior officialsa deputy and several businesspeoplein addition to 17 pending arrest warrants to be executed.
In Saab’s opinion, El Aissami’s alleged crimes and his entire “criminal plot,” as he described it, constituted “financial terrorism”as they had consequences on the economic stability of the entire country.
An advertisement in an electoral context
The arrest of the former oil tsar Tareck El Aissamiformer confidant of President Nicolás Maduro and his predecessor Hugo Chávez, “it seems to be part of this electoral context”explains to RFI the political scientist Guillermo Aveledo.
“Essentially, the context of rearrangements even within the forces of Chavismo in the face of the elections. Making captures, searching for resources that they have to have for the campaign, but at the same time part of the house cleaning campaign. Regarding criticism of corruption, it is ‘well, the president is not guilty, those are others who are guilty, there are others who have that responsibility.’ The blame and the circumstances and the shortcomings of this period will be handled in a scapegoat as big as the citizen Tarek, the Aissami, and in turn this will pose the permanent threat that is part of the official discourse, the permanent threat from external agents. The agency is already being linked through the Prosecutor’s Office with the United States. “That is the direct implication that the attorney general has made.”
