{"id":8076,"date":"2023-03-21T04:57:27","date_gmt":"2023-03-21T08:57:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/?p=8076"},"modified":"2023-03-22T05:07:28","modified_gmt":"2023-03-22T09:07:28","slug":"venezuela-oil-czar-in-surprise-resignation-amid-graft-probes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/?p=8076","title":{"rendered":"Venezuela Oil Czar in Surprise Resignation Amid Graft Probes"},"content":{"rendered":"
A mural shows workers at an oil refinery near the headquarters of Petroleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA) in Caracas, Tuesday, March 21 2023. Venezuela’s oil czar, Tareck El Aissami announced his resignation the previous day on Twitter and pledged to help investigate any allegations involving PDVSA. (AP Photo\/Ariana Cubillos)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The man responsible for running Venezuela\u2019s oil industry \u2014 the one that pays for virtually everything in the troubled country, from subsidized food to ridiculously cheap gas \u2014 has quit amid investigations into alleged corruption among officials in various parts of the government.<\/p>\n

Tareck El Aissami\u2019s announcement Monday was shocking on multiple counts. He was seen as a loyal ruling party member and considered a key figure in the government\u2019s efforts to evade punishing international economic sanctions.<\/p>\n

And he led the state oil company PDVSA in a Venezuelan business sector widely considered to be corrupt \u2014 in a country where embezzelment, bribery, money laundering and other wrongdoing are a lifestyle.<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously, they are giving it the patina of an anti-corruption probe,\u201d said Ryan Berg, director of the Americas program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank.<\/p>\n

\u201cRule of law is not being advanced here,\u201d Berg added. \u201cThis is really a chance for the regime to sideline someone that it felt for some reason was a danger to it in the moment and to continue perpetuating acts of corruption once particular individuals have been forced out of the political scene.\u201d<\/div>\n
\n

Hours after El Aissami revealed his resignation on Twitter, President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro called his government\u2019s fight against corruption \u201cbitter\u201d and \u201cpainful.\u201d He said he accepted the resignation \u201cto facilitate all the investigations that should result in the establishment of the truth, the punishment of the culprits, and justice in all these cases.\u201d<\/p>\n

Venezuela\u2019s National Anti-Corruption Police last week announced an investigation into unidentified public officials in the oil industry, the justice system and some local governments. Attorney General Tarek William Saab in a radio interview Monday said that at least a half dozen officials, including people affiliated with PDVSA, had been arrested, and he expected more to be detained.<\/p>\n

Among those arrested is Joselit Ramirez, a cryptocurrency regulator who was indicted in the U.S. along with El Aissami on money laundering charges in 2020.<\/p>\n

Corruption has long been rampant in Venezuela, which sits atop the world\u2019s largest petroleum reserves. But officials are rarely held accountable \u2014 a major irritant to citizens, the majority of whom live on $1.90 a day, the international benchmark of extreme poverty.<\/p>\n

\u201cI assure you, even more so at this moment, when the country calls not only for justice but also for the strengthening of the institutions, we will apply the full weight of the law against these individuals,\u201d Saab said.<\/p>\n

Oil is Venezuela\u2019s most important industry. A windfall of hundreds of billions in oil dollars thanks to record-high global prices allowed the late President Hugo Ch\u00e1vez to launch numerous initiatives, including state-run food markets, new public housing, free health clinics and education programs.<\/p>\n

But a subsequent drop in prices and government mismanagement, first under Ch\u00e1vez\u2019s government and then Maduro\u2019s, ended the lavish spending. And so began a complex crisis that has pushed millions into poverty and driven more than 7 million Venezuela to migrate.<\/p>\n

PDVSA\u2019s mismanagement, and more recently economic sanctions imposed by the U.S., caused a steady production decline, going from the 3.5 million barrels a day when Ch\u00e1vez rose to power in 1999 to roughly 700,000 barrels a day last year.<\/p>\n

David Smilde, a Tulane University professor who has conducted extensive research on Venezuela, said the moves by Maduro\u2019s government are more than just an effort to clean its image.<\/p>\n

\u201cArresting important figures and accepting the resignation of one of the most powerful ministers in a case that involves $3 billion does not improve your image,\u201d he said. \u201cIt is probably because the missing money actually has an important impact on a government with serious budgetary problems.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Biden administration recently loosened some sanctions, even allowing oil giant Chevron for the first time in more than three years to resume production. Maduro\u2019s government has been negotiating with its U.S.-backed political opponents primarily to get the sanctions lifted.<\/p>\n

U.S. congressional researchers saw El Aissami as an impediment to Maduro\u2019s goals.<\/p>\n

\u201cShould Al Aissami remain in that position, it could complicate efforts to lift oil sanctions,\u201d a November report from the Congressional Research Center said.<\/p>\n

The U.S. government designated El Aissami, a powerful Maduro ally, as a narcotics kingpin in 2017 in connection with activities in his previous positions as interior minister and a state governor. The Treasury Department alleged that \u201che oversaw or partially owned narcotics shipments of over 1,000 kilograms from Venezuela on multiple occasions, including those with the final destinations of Mexico and the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n

Under the government of Ch\u00e1vez, El Aissami headed the Ministry of Internal Affairs. He was appointed minister of oil in April 2020.<\/p>\n

\u201cEl Aissami was a key player in the Maduro government\u2019s sanctions evasion strategy. We\u2019re talking about someone who knows where all the bodies are buried, so it will be key to watch where he ends up,\u201d said Geoff Ramsey, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council focused on Colombia and Venezuela. \u201cIf El Aissami ends up being implicated himself, it could have serious implications for the entire power structure.\u201d<\/p>\n

In September, Maduro\u2019s government renewed wrongdoing accusations against another former oil minister, Rafael Ram\u00edrez, alleging he was involved in a multibillion-dollar embezzlement operation during the early 2010s that took advantage of a dual currency exchange system. Ram\u00edrez, who oversaw the OPEC nation\u2019s oil industry for a decade, denied the accusations.<\/p>\n

In 2016, Venezuela\u2019s then opposition-led National Assembly said $11 billion went missing at PDVSA in the 2004-2014 period when Ramirez was in charge of the company. In 2015, the U.S. Treasury Department accused a bank in Andorra of laundering some $2 billion stolen from PDVSA.<\/p>\n

– Regina Garcia Cano, AP News<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The man responsible for running Venezuela\u2019s oil industry \u2014 the one that pays for virtually everything in the troubled country, from subsidized food to ridiculously cheap gas \u2014 has quit amid investigations into alleged corruption among officials in various parts of the government. Tareck El Aissami\u2019s announcement Monday was shocking on multiple counts. He was…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":124,"featured_media":8079,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/storage.googleapis.com\/afs-prod\/media\/612af16575fe4d0dbe871dfb27dc876e\/800.webp","fifu_image_alt":"Venezuela Oil Czar in Surprise Resignation Amid Graft Probes","footnotes":""},"categories":[192],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-polity-governance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8076","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/124"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8076"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8076\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8078,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8076\/revisions\/8078"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}