Álex Saab was lobbying for Foglocons, says Luis Sánchez Yánez, former executive of that construction company

A few days after his 50th birthday and related to the Global Construction Fund (Foglocons) scandal and the Sucre System, Luis Eduardo Sánchez Yánez wants to have a clean name. The Venezuelan of Ecuadorian descent has filed a lawsuit in Bogotá, where he is based, against Assemblyman Fernando Villavicencio for insults, before which the legislator has said that he will face it with pleasure.

Sánchez, Jaime’s brother, who was a public official very close to Rafael Correa, assures that he was hired as vice president of Foglocons Venezuela and that he was a shareholder of the firm in Ecuador for just under three months. He asserts that Álvaro Pulido Vargas was the one who ran the business of building houses, gyms and stadiums in Venezuela, and that he introduced Álex Saab Morán as his partner at the beginning of 2012, but that he dealt very little with him because Saab did not have office at the company’s headquarters in Caracas. The United States obtained the extradition of Saab, whom it accuses of being the front man of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro; and he also presented an accusation against Pulido. Foglocons Ecuador invoiced $ 160 million in exports to Venezuela through the Sucre System, the Ecuadorian authorities raided their offices and started a lawsuit, but then a definitive dismissal was issued.

How did you meet Messrs. Álvaro Pulido and Álex Saab, and did you become a partner at Foglocons in Ecuador?

As a young man, since 1989 I was linked to banking and during my last ten years in Venezuela with Banco Santander, I resigned at the end of 2010 because then-president Hugo Chávez nationalized the institution. We came to Bogotá with my family, I began to give advice to companies. I met Mr. Pulido in June 2011 and he told me that his construction company had offered a project for the Housing Mission. In December of that year he contacted me in Bogotá and explained the project to me. A month earlier, a binational agreement had been signed between Colombia and Venezuela, in which Foglocons participated. A joint venture for the production of prefabricated panels was to be set up in Venezuela. In January 2012 we had another meeting in Caracas together with Miguel Perilla, executive vice president.

Saab appears at the signing of the binational agreement, did you not know it yet?

No, I met him later. In January 2012, a lot of people were hiring in Colombia, the plant was going to be set up, it was a very interesting binational project.

What was your position?

I worked as Vice President of Administration and Finance of the Venezuelan Foglocons, which was incorporated in March 2012. This company did not access the Cadivi currency system, it did not do so because it controlled ELM Import and Thermo Group. In 2011, ELM Import, which was controlled by Saab and Pulido, was granted a National Production Insufficiency Certificate by the Venezuelan State so that it could access foreign exchange. In that year they imported through the Aladi system. And in April 2012 it was renewed, by then trade with Colombia was closed and the Venezuelan State owed money to Colombian exporters.

How did Saab and Pulido control ELM Import?

I do not know if they signed an alliance or agreement, but I say that they controlled it because that Certificate of Insufficiency was very important, that allowed imports using the currencies that the Venezuelan State provided.

Is that why the contract for the houses was signed with ELM Import?

No, it was signed with Foglocons Venezuela. ELM imported the housing kits and was one of the suppliers. Unfortunately I do not have that contract. In May 2012 they informed us that they were going to invest in Ecuador by setting up a panel factory to import this product.

Did you already know Saab?

I met him in February of that year. The relationship of those of us who worked at Foglocons was with Pulido because he was involved in the operation, meetings with suppliers, for example. In fact, Saab did not have an office in the company, it was more on the issues of lobby, I was traveling a lot. Pulido introduced him to me as a partner in the company, a very short presentation. Logically in the time that I worked there we shared with Mr. Saab, but he does not appear in the papers but only Pulido.

The articles of incorporation of Foglocons Ecuador are dated September 12, 2012, how was this company formed?

The company’s legal advisor, Víctor Alfaro, began the procedures, they detected skin cancer on his nose and that is why they asked me to complete the process, that is why I appear together with Pulido in the constitution in September 2012 in Guayaquil . By October a company structure had already been created in Spain and Malta to absorb the Foglocons companies operating in Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador. The Spanish Grupo FGDC Latinoamérica Sociedad Limitada granted Alfaro a power of attorney to buy the shares of Foglocons in Ecuador and Colombia, and this occurs on November 30.

You and Pulido also created Constructora Jaar in Guayaquil on September 20.

Yes. Pulido wanted to have that company to work in Ecuador, taking advantage of the fact that they would have the panel factory, but it never really worked that I know of.

The power of the Spanish Grupo FGDC is given by the British Ian Geofrey Styles, can you document that Pulido is the final beneficiary of these companies?

This is a certificate from the authority indicating that FGDC Malta Holdings Limited was registered on October 23, 2012 and that the shareholders are Álvaro Pulido and Gordon Mifsud (intermediary listed with 192 companies on OffshoreLeaks). This is the corporate veil, the Maltese company owns the Spanish, which in turn owns the Ecuadorian. Alfaro signs for the Spanish company.

Y Pulido passed its shares to Fondo Global Petrolero SL, although the documents were presented to the Superintendency of Companies of Ecuador in May 2013.

That company also belongs to him, but I don’t have those documents. Pulido told me in Bogotá about the money laundering investigation in Ecuador, in July 2013 more or less, and he told me that my name appeared. I stayed with the company to ensure that they defended me until the dismissal in Ecuador, in April 2016. I have the documents of my liquidation.

In April 2015 we published the report on ‘The bleeding of dollars from Venezuela’, and in an interview you told us that the owner of the group was a financial fund from the Bahamas. Now he says he is from Spain and Malta.

Let me find the documents. What happens is that the company FGDC Latam 2012 was created in Spain, I think that’s what I told you about in 2015.

No, you told us it was Universal Venture Capital based in the Bahamas.

I explain. FGDC Malta Holdings Limited, from Pulido, constitutes several Spanish companies, one of them is FGDC Latam 2012, which is bought by Foglocons de Venezuela. I do not remember if it was in 2014 or 2015 when Malta Holdings was absorbed by Universal Venture Fund which is in Barbados.

The sea was not Universal Venture Capital of Bahamas bell Universal Venture Fund of Barbados.

That Maltese company is no longer a partner of the Spanish one and is now the Barbados fund, that is the structure that remained.

In 2015 he gave us a different name in another jurisdiction. In that interview you were accompanied by Menameh Michel Edery, partner of Thermo Group.

Yes, then he became CEO of Foglocons de Venezuela.

Why were the works not done?

Yes they were, there are half truths. The Tacarigua and Las Vegas projects were developed, which were not delivered in their entirety. The big problem was the transfer of land that belonged to different State institutions.

Journalists from Armando.Info who worked with this Journal They went to Cúa, and there was a vacant lot there.

There was a very large project, I don’t know if it was that, with a project of five thousand homes that was not executed due to problems with the land.

How much was his salary?

He earned in dollars and bolivars.

And until you left in May 2016, did the company continue to operate?

Sure and even after I left. Foglocons Venezuela built 20 vertical gyms, also a sports arena for the 2015 Pan American Beach Games, a baseball stadium in the state of Vargas.

Didn’t the Ecuador problem give you a headache?

If I had been part of ELM Import I would have been nervous, but I was vice president of Foglocons Venezuela and all my operation was in bolivars. I remember that from Ecuador about a million dollars or something like that of prefabricated panels arrived, what did not arrive were the toilets, tiles, doors, windows. With the purchasing area we traveled to Ecuador and had meetings with the Eljuri Group, the design group did the same with Window World. Then came the raid on the facilities and no material arrived. The works were worked with the supplies we had and the Venezuelan precast plant was put to work.

What entrepreneurs did you meet with?

It was about February or March 2013. We went to Cuenca to meet with Eljuri. And also with Nassib Neme, to whom I had given a very specific advice on an issue that has nothing to do with Foglocons, it was an intermediary for the sale of cable in Venezuela and Central America.

His brother was an official of the Government of Ecuador and stayed until 2015.

75% of my blood is Ecuadorian. We come from Cotopaxi. My father, Gustavo Armando Sánchez Yánez, and my maternal grandfather, Armando Yánez Caicedo, were the founders of the most industrial city in Venezuela, Puerto Ordaz. My dad and my mom, Smyrna Yánez Marticorena, are first cousins.

How did your brother get to Ecuador?

My mother returned to Ecuador in 2002. My brothers Jaime and Oscar are twins, and Jaime lived in the United States. And we decided to ask Jaime to return to Ecuador to take over a family farm in Barrancas, Cotopaxi. And he entered the Government through Manuela Gallegos, who knows my family.

And your brother didn’t know Chávez?

No, he met him through President Rafael Correa. And then he worked with the Minister of the Interior. He has never worked on security issues as a bodyguard.

He was with Correa on 30S.

My mother called us at noon on September 30, 2010 to tell us that she had called Jaime, but he was not answering her. Then he answered me and told me that he was going to leave his house to go to the Government Palace. In the afternoon he went to the Hospital and managed to enter thanks to some policemen.

Have you been summoned to give testimony in the case of Ecuador or the United States?

No. I have reacted to the statements of Assemblyman Fernando Villavicencio, who gave interviews to important Colombian media two weeks ago and accused me of being related to money laundering and drug trafficking. That is why on November 5 we filed a lawsuit in Bogotá with Dr. Rubén Darío Cevallos.

Could these accusations take away your residence in Colombia?

They are serious and absurd accusations. Lawyers are struck by the level of viciousness. It is a very political and complex issue, which is why I have filed the lawsuit in Bogotá.

There is the problem of a namesake.

That’s how it is. When the raid is carried out in Guayaquil and the company is investigated, it is discovered that in 2006 there was an investigation in Venezuela against a person named after me, born in Puerto Ordaz, who is a military man with a different identity card to mine. I knew about that investigation into drug trafficking, because in February of that year I had to travel to Spain and Immigration stopped me in Caracas for this issue, but they checked my documents and it is easy to realize that it is a homonym.

Have you never seen Pulido again?

I kept texting him until 2017 because they owed me a portion of the settlement. The same happened with doctor (Víctor) Alfaro in 2019 because he wanted a certification that I was not a shareholder of Foglocons Venezuela. There is another precision, as I lived in Bogotá like other executives, we traveled by plane every Friday afternoon from Caracas to spend the weekend with the family. (I)