2023-10-07 05:01:00
Opposition leader Juan Guaidó challenged Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro to offer to be tried by US justice after the Venezuelan Prosecutor’s Office issued an arrest warrant and requested a red alert from Interpol against the opposition leader, who is in the United States. . In his country, Guaidó has twenty open investigations against him.
Attorney General Tarek William Saab stated in a press conference that Guaidó is accused of committing the crimes of “treason to the country; usurpation of functions; profit or diversion of money, securities or public goods; money laundering, and illicit association.” Prosecutors were appointed “to issue an arrest warrant against him and the respective request for a red alert from Interpol so that this subject pays for these crimes that the justice of the United States of America knows about and disseminates,” he explained.
The Public Ministry opened 23 investigations into Guaidó for alleged crimes committed in the so-called “interim government” and five other cases related to a Venezuelan company in Colombia, but had never spoken of an arrest warrant against him, until now.
In a live broadcast on Instagram, this Friday Guaidó described the accusations against him as “propaganda to physically and morally persecute the Venezuelan opposition.” “The question again is: Why at this time, why now 17 days before the primaries? To continue distorting what is happening in the country,” he expressed when inviting people to vote in the primaries against the government. And to defend himself, he challenged President Nicolás Maduro: “This message goes to you: tomorrow let’s appear at any Prosecutor’s Office in this country. As you know, I am in the United States. Or if you prefer another jurisdiction: The Hague,” in reference to the United Nations International Court based in the Netherlands.
The investigation
The opponent would have used resources from the state oil company Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) “to finance himself, pay his legal expenses and forced the company to accept his refinancing terms,” according to a US court. “It is revealed that Juan Guaidó’s gang, and he personally, used the figure of a fictitious government ex professedly, in a premeditated manner, causing losses to the Venezuelan State of approximately 20,000 million dollars,” said the prosecutor.
Saab specified that in the context of the ongoing investigations “288 arrest warrants were issued, 129 people were arrested and have already been charged, and there are 13 people with an extradition request.” Furthermore, “63 people were convicted, 137 raids and 149 seizures were carried out,” while “261 real measures were issued,” he detailed.
“We hope for international collaboration so that this subject responds to justice to determine all the properties that could have been acquired by the members of the interim Government with the money stolen from the nation,” said the prosecutor. “Those who at some point believed in this guy and went out to march, see that he turned out to be a vulgar stream of the worst caliber, robbing and kidnapping,” he added.
The course
The “Interim Government” presided over by Guaidó operated from January 2019 by decision of the National Assembly (AN) – which then had a large opposition majority – after it was unaware of the new mandate initiated a few days before by Maduro, due to consider that it had arisen from fraudulent elections. The interim office had the support of 60 countries and continued to act even after the AN changed its composition in 2021 and recovered the Chavista majority, until its dissolution was announced at the end of last year. Shortly after, Guaidó left Venezuela and took refuge in Colombia, but President Gustavo Petro immediately expelled him from the country for not having legally requested asylum and he settled in Miami.
Although it never had real decision-making power within Venezuela, this parallel government did have access to the administration of Venezuelan assets in countries that supported it, especially in Colombia and the United States. That led to a scandal that paralyzed Monómeros, a petrochemical company based in Colombia, and to the debt and embargo of Citgo, one of the largest North American oil companies. Both Monómeros and Citgo belong to the Venezuelan State, through the petrochemical company Pequiven and the oil company PDVSA, respectively.
between the ropes
Guaidó is not the only opponent investigated. The Supreme Court of Justice of Venezuela approved on Thursday to endorse the extradition request against opposition leader Antonio Ledezma, who is accused of treason for statements in which he supposedly recognizes a conspiracy against the Maduro Government. The Venezuelan authorities will ask their peers in Spain, where he lives in exile, for the extradition of the former mayor of Caracas, assuming “the firm commitment” that “he will be tried in Venezuelan territory with due security and constitutional and criminal procedural guarantees, enshrined in the Constitution.” “.
The Venezuelan Prosecutor’s Office announced in August the filing of a new arrest warrant against Ledezma, “for treason, conspiracy, incitement to commit a crime and association to commit a crime.” Then, Ledezma himself, in statements to the press, defended himself by stating that the “extradition order was completely arbitrary.” “I have not been silent and they are not going to silence me,” he said.
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