Javier Alvarado, Deputy Minister of Energy of the Government of former Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez (1999-2013), resorted to a complicated corporate skein in tax havens to acquire real estate in Cartagena de Indias (Colombia), Madrid and Miami, and divert 15 million dollars ( 12.4 million euros) to Switzerland, Luxembourg and Dominica, according to an investigation by EL PAÍS.
The one who was also until 2010 director of the public company Corporación Eléctrica Nacional (Corpoelec) of Venezuela used for these investments the funds that he allegedly looted from the state company Petróleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA), according to the Andorran police.
The former Chavista leader has been among the 28 prosecuted by an Andorran court since September 2018 for participating in the alleged looting of 2,000 million euros from the Venezuelan oil company. Alvarado is accused of money laundering and of belonging to a network that charged commissions to companies between 2007 and 2012 in exchange for awards from the energy company.
Alvarado used Lairholt Finance Limited, his company in the tax haven of Belize, to buy a house in Spain for 1.1 million dollars (970,000 euros) in November 2009. He also resorted to this company to get another one in April 2011. real estate in Miami through the front man Michael Freeman for $ 950,000, according to internal documents from the Banca Privada d’Andorra (BPA). The transfers also reveal that Alvarado used his Belizean company to buy an apartment in Madrid for $ 700,000 in September 2011 through a bank in Panama.
The money route in tax havens
The financial movements of this former politician who gained the trust of the late Chávez confirm his tendency to move money from one tax haven to another. In August 2014, he transferred eight million euros of BPA to an account in his name at the Millenium Bank of Switzerland. And another million that he had in the Pyrenean principality ended up in a bank in the then tax haven of the Caribbean island of Dominica. Furthermore, in March 2015, the former deputy minister invested six million dollars (five million euros) in Luxembourg in a Sicav, the instrument used by large fortunes to pay less taxes.
A luxury train from Miami to New York
Alvarado also pulled on his merchant web to pay for renovations, real estate signs and expensive decorator fees, according to bills.
Thus, through his company Treviso International Foundation, he paid 1.5 million dollars to the Panamanian company Codfish Investments SA in November 2014.
The disbursement allowed to pay the decorator “Mr. Nieto ”(150,000); formalize property signs in “Miami and New York” (225,000); and pay back the lawyer Michael Freeman, alleged front man of the former Chavista leader (275,000). Also, remodel a home (250,000).
The mystery of a hotel in Cartagena de Indias
One of the most striking transactions leads to a plan to acquire the Anandá hotel in Cartagena de Indias, a 23-room luxury building with white walls that goes back to the 16th century Caribbean.
Alvarado invested four million dollars in this business in 2014. The ex-hierarch took over 70% of the shares of the establishment. And it settled a debt of two million dollars with a bank of the owner company, according to the documents.
To disembark in Anandá, the ex-president acquired through the Luxembourg firm Sirena International S. A 70% of the shares of the company Inversiones Calle del Cuartel, owner of the hotel, according to the minutes of the extraordinary meeting of the latter company dated November 7, 2014.
The representative of Sirena International SA in the transaction was Ceciree Casanova, former head of human resources at Electricidad de Caracas (EDC), a public company managed until 2010 by Alvarado. Casanova became the principal director of the company that owns the hotel after the purchase, according to the minutes.
EL PAÍS has tried unsuccessfully to obtain the version of the hotel managers Anandá.
Alvarado rejects through his lawyer, Antonio Catalá, having investments in Colombia. And he explains that the purchase of a property to turn it into a hotel in this country was frustrated in March 2015 after the intervention of the BPA, where the former chief managed five deposits and four companies that received 46.5 million euros from the alleged looting of PDVSA , according to researchers from the Pyrenean country.
Alvarado refuses to provide this newspaper with the document that proves that he reversed the purchase of the Anandá hotel; appeals to data protection.
The thesis that the establishment of Cartagena de Indias was not finally done collides with a report from the Andorran Financial Intelligence Unit (Uifand), which maintains that Alvarado transferred on February 24, 2015 more than four million dollars from his Panamanian company Treviso Internacional Foundation to the Barbados Mercantile Inversiones Calle del Cuartel to acquire the hotel.
Alvarado also rejects that his multi-million dollar investments are connected to the looting of PDVSA. And he relates his fortune to “a professional activity in the area of energy and the environment.”
However, the flow of funds that Alvarado moved in Andorra was nourished by transfers from other members of the network that the Venezuelan energy company plundered, according to the Andorran police. Specifically: Alvarado received 25 million dollars from Nervis Villalobos, who was also Vice Minister of Energy of Venezuela and 8.8 million from Luis Mariano Rodríguez Cabello, business manager of Diego Salazar, cousin of Rafael Ramírez, former Minister of Oil and former president of PDVSA .
A bench that looked away
The managers of the BPA opened the financial network of Alvarado – according to internal documents of this bank – despite the fact that the former Chavista leader had been linked to money laundering cases in World-check since 2005, a database used by banks to identify People Politically Exposed (PEP), which is the name in financial jargon for those personalities who, because they have held public office, must undergo special control to prevent money laundering.
Along with his prosecution in Andorra, Alvarado looks out over a cliff of legal cases. The ex-president is being investigated in Spain and the US In Madrid, he was arrested in 2019 at the request of a Texas court, which claimed him for the alleged crimes of money laundering and conspiracy to launder in a corruption case connected to the Venezuelan electricity company of more than 50 million dollars. The Plenary of the Criminal Chamber of the National High Court denied his extradition to the United States on understanding that the case was being investigated in Spain as a result of a PDVSA complaint.
In addition, Alvarado has been under investigation in the National Court since 2017 for the alleged collection of commissions in a case that investigates the contracts of the Asturian company Duro Felguera.
Tax havens to flee from Chávez
Switzerland, Andorra, Dominica, Belize … The millionaire wealth of funds that Javier Alvarado, former Vice Minister of Energy of Hugo Chávez (1999-2013), allegedly plundered from Petróleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA) traveled until 2015 through a complicated web of tax havens and jurisdictions shielded by bank secrecy, according to the Andorran police.
The lawyer of the ex-Chavista leader, Antonio Catalá, thus justifies this practice of his client: “The use of tax havens in the Caribbean by Venezuelans was very common due to the illegal exchange law enacted by the Chávez government in 2006”. The lawyer adds that Alvarado “is accrediting before the National Court that his intervention, far from being criminal, consisted of denouncing before the highest levels of the Government of Venezuela the commission of illicit acts by third parties.”
investigacion@elpais.es
source https://pledgetimes.com/the-great-booty-of-former-chavista-vice-minister-alvarado/
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