Colombian businessman Alvaro Pulido, partner of Venezuelan envoy Alex Saab, was arrested in the latter’s country. This comes as Nicolas Maduro’s government launched a massive anti-corruption operation in mid-March. In total, at least 58 people, some in high places, were arrested.
Alvaro Pulido, a Colombian businessman, was the main associate of Alex Saab, presented by the government of Nicolas Maduro as an emissary of the Venezuelan state, and imprisoned since October 2021 in the United States. Alex Saab and Alvaro Pulido Vargas – who also called himself German Enrique Rubio Salas – have been indicted for corruption by a Florida court.
American justice accuses themwith their accomplices, of having paid bribes and secret commissions to intermediaries in Venezuela to obtain juicy public contracts.
The two men are suspected, in particular, of having embezzled money from the Venezuelan government’s food aid program, intended for the poorest inhabitants. This program, called CLAP (Local supply and production committees) was launched in 2016, when the country was sinking into a unprecedented hyperinflation and in a deep economic, social and political crisis. In February 2020, according to the World Food Programme, a third of the population did not have enough to eat.
The pair are also suspected of embezzling nearly $1.5 billion from state oil company PDVSA, the site revealed this month. Armando.infowhich is part of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).
What do we know about his arrest?
A Venezuelan judicial source assured Agence France-Presse (AFP) on Wednesday that Alvaro Pulido had indeed been arrested, as announced on Tuesday. the CNN channel in Spanish. However, the Venezuelan authorities have not officially confirmed the information for the moment.
So far, American justice has promised ten million dollars in reward for any information leading to the arrest of this linked businessman ” to the corrupt Maduro regime “.
The attorney general of Venezuela, Tarek William Saab, had declared at the end of March to the Colombian radio W-Radio that Alvaro Pulido’s house had indeed been searched.
What is the scale of the ongoing anti-corruption operation in Venezuela?
Since mid-March, at least 58 people have been arrested and 18 others are the subject of arrest warrants, as part of a major anti-corruption operation, according to the figures given by the Attorney General. Among those arrested are senior officials of the public oil company PDVSA, senior civil servants, managers of a public mining company, and even magistrates.
The full list of those arrested and suspected of corruption has not been made public.
The Venezuelan authorities have also not specified for the moment the amount of the sums which would have been embezzled. The Armando.info site claims to have consulted documents showing more than thirteen billion dollars in unpaid invoices for oil deliveries made by PDVSA between 2019 and 2022 to dozens of different companies.
Is this an internal purge of the regime?
From a certain point of view, we can say that it is a purge between different factions of Chavismo, answers Mariano de Alba, researcher senior for’International Crisis Group. However, ” above all, this affair reveals very high levels of corruption within the government “, he underlines.
This while teachers have been demonstrating for several months to demand better salaries, in the face of some of the highest inflation in the world – 310% in 2022, according to the IMF.
” The fact that so much money has been lost to corruption when it could have been used to raise the now extremely low salaries of civil servants puts Chavismo in a very bad position vis-à-vis the government. public opinion, as the country prepares for a new presidential election in 2024 “, concludes the researcher, joined by RFI.