In 1980, the historical Medellin Cartel leader, Pablo Escobar, had an idea.
Basically, he had a vision, a dream: to turn Colombia into a narco-state; a country where
the government and all public institutions would be directly controlled by drug trafficking.
Such was his commitment, that in 1982 – as...
I think you all know – Pablo Escobar himself, one of the most important mobsters in all
of history, gained a seat at the Colombian chamber of representatives.
And...
it’s important to bear in mind that it’s one thing for the Mafia to buy or bribe a
politician, and quite another for them to hold all the power directly.
Can you imagine a country where the police, the army, all administrative officials and
even the courts themselves were ultimately under the direct orders of drug-dealers?
Of course, if Pablo Escobar's vision had panned out, Colombia wouldn’t only have much higher
levels of drug production and export, but the Medellín Cartel itself would’ve become
untouchable, invincible....
He would’ve gained complete impunity to do and undo whatever he wanted at will.
Fortunately, Pablo Escobar never managed to carry out his dream...
However...
today, 3 decades later it looks like his dream is now being realized; But... this time we
aren’t talking about Colombia, we’re talking about Venezuela.
Apparently, the four characters you’re looking at right now…
Don’t only control the country, they are also the leaders of an international crime
and drug trafficking network.
Of course, we’re talking about: Nicolás Maduro, President of Venezuela.
Diosdado Cabello the powerful president of the National Constituent Assembly, whom many
already rank as the strongest man in the regime.
And Tareck El Aissami, former Vice President and current Minister of Industry and National
Production, whose personal fortune, according to DEA calculations, surpasses the 3 billion
dollar mark.
3 billion dollars!
And, the fourth, is Néstor Reverol, minister of Internal Affairs, Justice and Peace, who,
to top it off, was the previous National Counternarcotics Office Director.
Well, everything indicates that these four people are leading the transformation of Venezuela
into a narco-state.
Listen up.
THE MAFIA TAKES CONTROL
Venezuela is in shreds.
Hunger is increasing, inflation is out of control and hundreds of thousands of people
are fleeing the country.
Even hospitals don’t have basic supplies like medicine, analytical equipment or plasters.
There’s such a huge mess that the PDVSA itself; the Venezuelan state-owned oil company
with the most reserves in the world, is bankrupt.
Check this out...
To this day, PDVSA has so many embargo orders that in order to sell the increasingly dwindling
Venezuelan oil, it’s beginning to resort to tricks and techniques used by Hollywood
movie-style smugglers:
For example, since Venezuelan oil companies are at risk of being confiscated... to settle
all outstanding debts on the oil they transport...
PDVSA has begun to transfer oil from its ships to other ships with the Cuban flag out at
sea… who are then responsible for taking the crude oil to its destination, thus avoiding
being seized.
Because folks, in Venezuela practically everything that has value, has been or is being looted.
Corruption has reached almost every corner of the country.
Let's see, the Bolivarian revolution promised prosperity...
what they forgot to clarify is that all that prosperity would only be for a few... for
the friends of the revolution, of course.
Don’t believe me?
Well, take a look…
Many regime members promote and lead operations for gas contraband to sell in Brazil and Colombia.
They are also mostly responsible for food and medicine contraband, which the state buys
and then sells on the black market.
They have looted public accounts and tens of billions of dollars have disappeared both
from the government and from PDVSA.
In Venezuela, even the Central Bank’s US dollars have been looted...
Yes, you heard that right.
Allow me to explain.
One of the first things that the Chavez regime did was implement a rigid exchange control...
that fixed, for example, the official exchange between the bolivar and the US dollar, to
a rate that had nothing to do with the numbers on the street.
That way, the government’s friends could access US dollars with just a handful of bolivares.
Bolivares that due to the country’s current hyperinflation are now worth practically nothing.
The maneuver was so well perfected, that it is estimated that 20% of all imports declared
in recent years have been completely false operations that were done for the sole purpose
of obtaining dollars at the official exchange rate, to save them in foreign accounts.
And, this is important, because according to estimates we could be talking about a theft
of more than 100 billion dollars.
And of course, PDVSA hasn’t escaped this plunder:
(“A group of companies lent 7.2 billion bolivares to PDVSA, which, when exchanged
at the black market rate, would be about 42 million dollars, but when exchanged at the
official rate, would become approximately 600 million dollars, which were deposited
in an account in Malta.”
César Batiz, Venezuelan journalist)
But of course...
since no more can be squeezed out of the country, the regime giants have sought a new alternative
source
of income.
(TURNING INTO A NARCO-STATE)
The issue of drug-dealers and Venezuela isn’t new...
it has, however, evolved.
Allow me to explain… for years, Colombian cartels tried to use routes through Venezuela
to distribute their products.
And, of course, to do so, they began bribing policemen, national guard members, high officials,
etc., etc.
So they’d turn a blind eye.
This was the first stage.
As it worked, dealers got to know the land better and figured out who they could trust
or not, so they moved into the second stage... something like: “ok, now that we have a
deal, if I give you more money, you don’t only look away, you also protect and transport
my merchandise”.
This was the second stage.
Later, many Colombian mobsters realized that given the enormous pressure they had from
the Colombian government and the DEA, they’d be safer in Venezuela.
So at the beginning of the 21st century, that’s precisely what happened, many of these sinister
“merchants” moved their operations center from Colombia to Venezuela.
And that’s when they started to closely collaborate with the authorities.
And I mean really closely.
What do you think the Venezuelan government did then?
In 2005, they decided to expel the DEA from Venezuelan territory and suspend their agreement
to monitor narco-flights.
Therefore, the Venezuelan territory became a kind of refuge for drug traffickers, the
United States could no longer keep track of them.
Fantastic, isn’t it?
Of course, in exchange for getting rid of the United States, they had to pay a modest
commission – the regime giants needed to live off of something, right?
That was the third stage.
But... just a moment folks, because that's how we got to the fourth and last stage, which
is where we’re at right now.
Business was going well... so well that many of the Bolivarian revolution leaders asked
themselves a question...
We have the government, the police, the army and a lot of resources...
why on earth should we share anything with Colombians?
Or whoever?
(“We capture them here, we’ve captured more than 100 Colombian drug-lords, here in
Venezuela.”)
Do you know what happened then?
Well...
The Venezuelan authorities began arresting all the drug traffickers who didn’t want
to cooperate with them by giving them their routes as well as their distribution business…
That’s how people such as Maximiliano Bonilla, aka “Valenciano”, the chief of the Envigado
Office; Héctor Germán Buitrago, aka “Martin Llanos”; Diego Perez Henao, aka Diego Rastrojo,
and Daniel Barrera Barrera, aka “el loco” fell.
All of them were found in the list of the most significant traffickers.
So everything indicates that right now in Venezuela, even though there are tons of criminal
groups operating in the area... the government giants hold the ultimate control...
Characters such as Diosdado Cabello, allegedly the most important leader of the “Los Soles
Cartel”, the cartel formed by the top leaders of the Bolivarian government.
(“The Venezuelan people suffer under corrupt politicians who tighten their grip on power
while lining their own pockets.
“We are imposing costs on figures like Diosdado Cabello who exploit their official positions
to engage in narcotics trafficking, money laundering, embezzlement of state funds, and
other corrupt activities".
U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin)
In fact, one of Diosdado Cabello’s own personal assistants, Leasmy Salazar, fled Venezuela
in 2014 with the help of the DEA.
And his statement couldn't be more forceful: in addition to providing evidence on the organization’s
operation, he stated that Mr. Diosdado Cabello, president of the National Constituent Assembly,
gives direct orders on the routes and the departure of boats loaded with prohibited
substances.
And he’s not the only one.
Testimonies are accumulating in the DEA offices.
For example, there’s Walid Makled’s statement, from when he was arrested in Colombia in 2011.
Makled was one of the most powerful drug traffickers in Venezuela.
For example he controlled Puerto Cabello, which according to the DEA was the exit point
for most of the narcotics distributed from the country.
Well, after his arrest Makled declared with great detail that he had done business with
several dozens of Venezuelan generals, high-level government officials, such as Henry Rangel
Silva... who was later named minister of defense... or Hugo Carvajal, former army intelligence
director who supposedly paid him $ 50,000 a week...
Quite a nice salary!
He also claimed to have financed one of Hugo Chavez's campaigns in exchange for concessions
in Puerto Cabello.
With all these relationships, it’s easy to understand how in November 2016, Efraín
Antonio Campo Flores and Francisco Flores de Freitas, two of the Venezuelan first lady,
Cilia Flores’s nephews, were convicted in a New York court for conspiring to traffic
hundreds of kilos of narcotics.
And, folks, according to current estimates, business in Venezuela won’t stop growing...
Between 15 and 20% of all the cocaine that moves in the world every year passes through
this country.
And not only that, apparently the number of laboratories is rising like foam.
Of course...
the giants of the Bolivarian revolution need money to keep the structures of repression
loyal: the army, the police, the national guard...
Also, in exchange for working in Venezuela, the different criminal groups based there,
from the mafia to the paramilitaries and the Colombian guerrillas, support the regime...
And since there’s good business, Maduro and company are still filling their pockets.
Unfortunately, the consequences of all this are terrible:
For one, looting all public resources... has led the country to ruin; And on top of that,
it’s fueling an enormous amount of violence...
See, according to data from the Venezuelan Violence Observatory…
in 2017... there were 89 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in the country.
That is, more than 26,000 people lost their lives violently.
Venezuela has become the most dangerous country in all of Latin America... and the situation
in some areas like Caracas is even worse.
The capital’s homicide rate skyrocketed in 2017 to 130 people per 100,000 inhabitants.
Meanwhile the members of the government who are taking advantage of this situation and
making actual fortunes are buying properties all over the world... from the Dominican Republic,
where they are making millionaire investments in hotels, urbanization, golf courses... to
Madrid,
a city to which not only thousands of Venezuelans fleeing the disaster are arriving, but also
many of the relatives of the Soles Cartel bosses and other high position members loyal
to the revolution.
(“I now sometimes find myself sitting in restaurants in Madrid right next to people
whom I wouldn’t feel comfortable ever seeing in Caracas,” Leopoldo López Gil, the father
of Leopoldo López, a leading opposition politician who has been kept under house arrest in Caracas.)
Unfortunately, the Bolivarian regime... has found its best ally in drug-dealing... both
to fill their pockets and to keep their power.
In short, my friends, that's how things are.
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