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Lagniappe
Gustavo Coronel*: Security briefing
to U.S. Congress staff on Venezuela
A “Center for Security Policy” session on Venezuela for U.S. Congress staff suggests that Chavez leads a terrorist and drug trafficking regime.
In room 2255 of the Sam Rayburn Building of the U.S. Congress, the Center for Security Policy, a think tank based in Washington DC, held a session on Venezuela October 30. It was essentially designed to brief staff from U.S. Congress members on the Venezuelan current political and economic situation. The panelists participating in this briefing included the Center's President Frank Gaffney, who provided a general overview; Nancy Menges, the Director of the Latin American Report produced by the Center, who covered the connection between Venezuela and Russia and China; Consultant Douglas Farah, who spoke about the Venezuelan-Iranian connection; Venezuelan geologist Gustavo Coronel, who spoke about the use of oil by Chavez as a political weapon; Martin Rodil, from Global Resources and Solutions, who analyzed the current drug trafficking through Venezuela; Angel Rabasa, from the Rand Corporation, who discussed Venezuela and its connection with terrorists and insurgents; and Norman Bailey, formerly with the Directorate of National Intelligence and Ambassador Curtin Winsor, who provided final comments and some conclusions for future action. The main topics discussed in the session can be summarized as follows:
Connection between Chavez and the Colombian terrorist organization, FARC.
• The connection between the Venezuelan regime of Hugo Chavez and the Colombian terrorists from FARC is now well established and well documented, mainly through the documents found in deceased terrorist Raul Reyes's laptops.The letters of Raul Reyes and Raul Márquez to Marulanda found in the laptops are sufficient proof that the government of Hugo Chavez was active in assisting the FARC with money and weapons. The main link between the Chavez regime and the FARC was former Minister of the Interior, Ramón Rodríguez Chacín. This has also been well established in published videos and documents and, in fact, led to Rodríguez Chacín's departure from the Chavez cabinet days before he was named as an accomplice of international terrorism by the U.S. government. Rodriguez Chacin, incidentally, is now advising” Bolivian President Evo Morales. The connection with the Colombian terrorists has also been handled by Venezuelan Chief of Military Intelligence, Hugo Carvajal, and by the head of the Venezuelan Secret Police, Henry Rangel, both also named by the U.S. government as collaborating with the terrorists. These three men took direct orders from Hugo Chavez;
A Venezuelan illicit operation exists, involving weapons, drugs and people.
• A Venezuelan financial mafia has been created within the Chavez regime, made up of bankers, government bureaucrats and the “in-betweens” of Chavez's friends and relatives to control fraudulent financial transactions, drug movements and a myriad of government's corrupt business dealings, in order to enrich themselves. What could be called an illegal pipeline running through Venezuela now seems to transport weapons to FARC, drugs and terrorists. For example, the man who handles the food business for Chavez's brother, Adán, is Ricardo Fernandez Barruecos, a Colombian-Venezuelan citizen, now operating in Panama. This operation is based on the distribution of food by companies owned by Chavez's friends being sold with surcharges to the Chavez government. Fernandez Barruecos has also been reported as buying a tuna fleet in Ecuador, to convert it into a drug trafficking operation. There seems to be a triangulation going on, through which weapons are sent to the Colombian terrorists, drugs are sent to Venezuela and Venezuela distributes them to Europe and U.S., laundering the money through its financial systems. Every kilogram of cocaine going through Venezuela gives Venezuelans involved in the operation some $10,000. Flights carrying cocaine from Venezuela to the north (USA) and to the East (Africa, Europe) have increased from 21 in 2002 to over 220 in 2007. Since the amount of cocaine going through Venezuela these days is of the order of 300 tons or more per year, illegal income obtained by Venezuelan drug traffickers amount to some $3 billion per year. Illegal activities by this mafia also include the kidnapping of Venezuelan citizens for ransom, notably so along the Venezuelan-Colombian border, in the State of Tachira.
The Chavez-Iran Connection.
• The Venezuelan-Iranian connection includes banking operations between the Iranian Bank Saderat and its Venezuelan affiliate Banco Internacional de Desarrollo, BID, and Venezuelan banks such as BANESCO and Caroni, designed to circumvent U.S. supervision. BANESCO has a U.S. branch in Florida and operates on U.S. soil, in spite of this association. The connection also serves as a pipeline for terrorists coming from Iran through Venezuela, where they are provided with false Venezuelan documents, and travel on to the U.S., via Mexico.
Chavez financing terrorist organizations.
• Some financing for terrorist organizations such as Hizballah originates in Venezuela, in Margarita Island. The Lebanese branch of the Hizballah organization has publicly expressed gratitude to Hugo Chavez for his support.
Petroleos de Venezuela laundering money in its financial system?
• No one seems to know how much oil the Venezuelan state-owned company really produces or how much money handled by the company comes from oil sales or from other sources. Therefore, the possibility exists that some of the money in the company's financial system could originate from non-oil transactions. Two of the potential sources mentioned are the food distribution system that handles mostly cash and drug money.
Organized centers of corruption within the Chavez regime**.
• Corruption seems generalized within the Chavez's government system, mostly organized around three main branches: a financial branch, handling murky financial transactions involving significant commissions, led by BANESCO and other friendly banks; a commercial branch, led by the food distributing companies owned by the Chavez family and close friends, including Diosdado Cabello, and a media branch, led by former Vice-president Jose Vicente Rangel the Capriles publishing group, Omar Camero and Esteban Pineda.
Chavez has promoted a Latin American rogue army of extremists.
• Chavez and oil money have been key factors in the creation of a Latin American “army” of irregulars, which are active promoting civil unrest and extremism in their countries: the ‘piqueteros” and Hebe Bonafini's “madres de Mayo” from Argentina, the “casas del alba” in Peru, the “centros bolivarianos” in several countries, the “consejos comunales” en Venezuela. These groups are slowly finding ways to network with Islamic and anti-Semitic extremists active in other parts of the world
___________
Some of the main conclusions can be summarized as follows
1. There is abundant evidence pointing to the regime of Hugo Chavez as a threat to U.S. national security.
2. The Venezuelan financial system is starting to incorporate money-laundering schemes in order to close the increasing deficit between its legal income and Chavez's financial requirements.
3. Petroleos de Venezuela is increasingly unreliable as a supplier of oil to the U.S. and is already borrowing large sums of money from China, Japan and other countries (up to $10 billion in the last months), offering to pay these countries with future oil deliveries that might never be delivered.
4. Chavez's finances are very fragile. Net international monetary reserves of Venezuela are much smaller than claimed by Chavez, probably even negative, when compared to existing commitments.
5. The U.S. should designate the Chavez government as a terrorist aiding regime and cut off Venezuelan oil imports. At this moment such an action would not produce a spike in oil prices and could be managed without problems by the temporary use of the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
6. Members of the Venezuelan banking system should be put in the U.S. list of banking institutions that violate U.S. banking laws and regulations
7. The Venezuela-Mexico drug connection is becoming increasingly important and merits some urgent action by the U.S.* I participated in the panel and discussed the general situation of the Venezuelan oil industry and the use of oil by Hugo Chavez as a political weapon. I am fully responsible for what I said, all of which was recorded in video. I also agree with most everything that was said during the session but not necessarily all.
** Some of the names appeared in small group conversations during the meeting, not all during the formal presentations.
Gustavo Coronel is a 28 years oil industry veteran, a member of the first board of directors (1975-1979) of Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), author of several books. At the present Coronel is Petroleumworld associate editor and advisor on the opinion and editorial content of the site. Petroleumworld does not necessarily share these views.
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Petroleumworld News 11/07/08
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