The “Citgo 6”, a Venezuelan token to pressure the US.

When Alex Saab was extradited to USA, Verónica Vadell had a bad feeling, and was not mistaken, that same day they revoked the benefit of house by jail to her father, and to the rest of the six former directors of Citgo condemned in Venezuela.

Known as the “Citgo 6,” five citizens of the United States and one with permanent residence in that country, are serving sentences of between eight and 13 years on charges of corruption.

But the specialized NGO Foro Penal counts them among the more than 251 political prisoners in Venezuela.

Verónica Vadell, the oldest of the three children of Tomeu Vadell, appointed vice president of refining at Citgo – a subsidiary of the state-owned Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) in the United States – 15 days before her arrest, remembers being “watching the news of Alex Saab and the extraction ”from Cape Verde to Miami to face laundering charges in federal court.

“We worry because we have seen before that the Venezuelan government has reacted when certain things happen in the United States,” he explains by videoconference from that country.

While Saab, a Colombian businessman and suspected of being the front man of the illegitimate President Nicolás Maduro, was extradited on October 16, the “Citgo 6” returned to El Helicoide, one of the feared prisons of the Venezuelan intelligence service (Sebin).

“If anyone had doubts that he is a hostage, this latest arrest confirms it,” says Vadell’s wife, Dennysse. “No government should play games like this with people’s lives.”

In addition to Tomeu Vadell, José Pereira Ruimwyk, former president of the oil company, is serving a sentence, as well as former directors Jorge Toledo, Gustavo Cárdenas, José Luis Zambrano and Alirio Zambrano, who would find out weeks later, thanks to a newspaper that a bricklayer lent them in the Directorate General of Military Counterintelligence (DGCIM), why they had been arrested.

“Open your hearts”

They had already revoked the house for jail: in February 2020, after a visit to the White House by the opposition Juan Guaidó, recognized as interim president of Venezuela by Washington and dozens of governments, although in practice Maduro exercises control.

In this context, the “Citgo 6” were returned to prison. It was then considered a “disappearance”, since not even the court that had issued the house arrest knew where they were, says Jesús Loreto, Vadell’s lawyer.

This episode was known by the United Nations working group on forced disappearances.

“It is evident that the reasons for their incarceration are not legal, but rather they respond to an intention of the government to use them in some way in the context of political achievements in its relations with the United States,” says Gonzalo Himiob, director of Foro Penal, by underlining that the vices of the justice system are multiple.

Tense since the era of the late President Hugo Chávez (1999-2013), relations between Venezuela and the United States, which has demanded the release of the “Citgo 6” several times, have been marked since 2017 by an artillery of financial sanctions that seek that the country controlled by Chavismo return to the democratic path.

Loreto describes the process as “turbulent”: the trial – which began on August 6, 2020, two and a half years after his arrest on November 21, 2017 – was behind closed doors and “took place in a hallway.” court due to the pandemic, guarded by armed Sebin agents.

The defense could not enter with pencil and paper to take notes. “I could only enter with a paper already printed,” recalls Loreto, who also had to remove his watch and even lost a pair of glasses, examined in such a way that they were damaged, to rule out that he had a recording device.

They were attributed the irregular signing of a refinancing contract behind the back of the Venezuelan Executive, but Loreto assures that “it was proven that this contract was never signed.”

As for Vadell, the sentence “expressly” says that he must remain in prison because his position indicates that he should “meet periodically with the president of Citgo and that by virtue of that he committed the crime of association to commit a crime,” Loreto remarks, who questioned that at the appeal hearing, held on November 16, the defendants were not present.

Vadell’s arrest, considered “arbitrary” by his defense, was reflected in a report by the UN Fact-Finding Mission in September 2021.

His family takes refuge in faith and in photographs. In one, taken in 2015, Vadell smiles alongside his dog Sargent Pepper, now 13 years old. “There is a hole in the house,” says his daughter Cristina, while Denysse cries out for his freedom.

“All these charges are false,” she says desperately. “Open your hearts, please release him!”