Former PDVSA president blames Maduro for corruption in Venezuela

The former president of PDVSA, Rafael Ramírez, affirms that in Venezuela there is not a fight against corruption, but a “fight between oligarchs” who have “looted the country” with the approval of the Government of the country’s president, Nicolás Maduro, who is responsible for the “unpublished” degree achieved in this regard.

In a telematic interview granted to EFE in Vienna, Ramírez refers to the corruption plot that has come to light these days with 25 detainees, including 14 officials and 11 businessmen.

“Maduro is responsible because it is not about officials who evaded the existing controls, but rather that the government itself removed all the controls that existed“, says.

The detainees “are scapegoats, the heads are missing,” adds Ramírez, who was Venezuela’s oil minister for 12 years during the government of the late Hugo Chávez (1999-2013).

He assures that the facts of the current scandal surrounding the state-owned Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), investigated by the prosecution, are being brought to light in a controlled manner by the government.

It is neither a fight against corruption nor an action by the Justice, but a “settling of scores at the top of ‘madurismo'”, says the 59-year-old engineer.

At the same time, he affirms that this scandal proves him right regarding his criticism of the Maduro government, which he accuses of dismantling the Venezuelan oil industry.

“The corrupt are them, my executioners, the ones who persecute me,” says Ramírez from Rome, while reiterating his categorical rejection of the corruption accusations against him by the Venezuelan Justice, which he attributes to an attempt to silence him.

Missing US$ 25,000 million

Ramírez claims to have knowledge of internal PDVSA documents that reveal the loss of “25,000 million dollars” in oil that the company “delivered to individuals” in the last two years and for which payment never reached the country.

“The problem -he explains- is that Venezuela lost the traceability of its oil operations”, those responsible for PDVSA “stopped rendering accounts to the National Assembly and admitting audited financial reports”.

Ramírez compares what happened with the collapse of the Soviet Union, when “the hierarchs of the communist party” divided up the companies, becoming what are now called “Russian oligarchs.”

What is happening now in Venezuela is “a fight between oligarchs, some are displacing others”, without “any political project to build socialism. Those 25,000 million dollars have gone to the hands of the Maduro operators”.

Maduro’s right hand

For Ramírez, the recent resignation of Tareck El Aissami as head of Oil -officially to “support” the ongoing investigation- also reveals an important fracture of the state leadership, since it is about “the right handfrom Maduro.

“They have had to put it aside because of the scandal that this means and also because there are sectors of the madurismo that are negotiating” with Washington, says Ramírez.

In this way, he alludes to the fact that the arrest warrant for drug trafficking issued by the US Justice against El Aissami hinders negotiations on a partial lifting of the US oil embargo imposed on Venezuela.

According to Ramírez, El Aissami “has handed over the oil industry to international agents, including the government of Iran”.

washington “He is not willing to continue understanding himself with a character like this”, he assures.

But despite the fact that he has apparently been removed from power, El Aissami “He is protected, nothing will happen to him, because he is still Maduro’s right hand”.

“As he is one of them, they have kept absolute silence. Not even the prosecutor mentions it”, he highlights.

“Officially they do not imply it at all“, although “This man had the green light to do whatever he wanted in PDVSA” and was responsible “of all that illegal invention” of cryptocurrency.

They called her “Petro” and “It was used above all to hide pensions and workers’ rights”, assures Ramírez.

“They began to pay them in Petros, that is, in nothing”, and they also used it “to launder billions of dollars in the auction that they have made of powerful state companies that today are worthless”, concludes Ramírez.

Source: EFE