Spanish justice agrees to hand over to the United States a former Venezuelan chavez national treasurer

The Spanish National Court approved the extradition of the former national of Venezuela Claudia Patricia Díaz Guillén to USA, which claims her for money laundering and criminal organization for favoring businessman Raúl Gorrín in a plot to exchange foreign currency.

In a car known this Friday, the magistrates consider that the requirements for extradition are given for crimes that in the United States are classified as a criminal association to commit money laundering and two crimes of money laundering.

According to the claim of the Federal Court of the Southern District of Florida (USA), from 2008 to 2017 Gorrín Belisario, together with Díaz Guillén and her husband Adrián Velásquez Figueroa participated with others in a “corrupt ploy” in relation to the foreign currency exchange carried out by the Venezuelan government of Hugo Chávez and his successor, Nicolás Maduro, in exchange for bribes.

Guillén is known as the nurse of the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and her husband, who was his bodyguard, is pending that the National Court will also rule on his extradition for the same events.

In 2019, the Spanish National Court refused to extradite Guillén and her husband to Venezuela, as well as an accountant from the state oil company PDVSA, taking into account the situation the country is going through, which he considered endangered his integrity.

Now, he accepts the delivery to the United States of the former head of the Venezuelan Treasury in light of the documentation provided by the authorities of that country last year.

According to that documentation, Gorrín paid hundreds of millions of dollars to secure the right to participate in foreign currency exchange transactions that earned him hundreds of millions of dollars.

In his strategy, Gorrín, together with others, promised, authorized and made corrupt payments to officials of the Venezuelan government, including two national treasurers, Alejandro Andrade Cedeno and Claudia Patricia Díaz Guillén, “in order to ensure an undue advantage in obtaining and withholding of the right to carry out foreign currency exchange transactions with favorable rates ”.

To conceal the payments, according to documentation from the American authorities, Gorrín used bank accounts owned by shell companies and disguised numerous bribery payments to Díaz Guillén by making the payments to her husband rather than to her directly.

Between 2011 and 2013, the businessman made bribery payments of at least US $ 65 million for the benefit of the defendant through account transfers from Switzerland to the United States.

In addition to the bribes, Gorrín also bought and paid expenses related to private jets, yachts, mansions, champion horses, watches and other luxury items.

In their resolution, the Spanish magistrates reject the arguments of the defendant to oppose the extradition, among them that it is already being investigated for the same events in Spain, as well as that having obtained Spanish nationality in April 2021 would be cause to deny Delivery.

Regarding the first of the arguments, the judges conclude that it is not the same facts for which she is being investigated in this country and, regarding the Spanish nationality as a reason for denial, as well as its roots, they consider that the factors to reject the extradition of nationals, such as the weighting on the seriousness and the ties or roots in the country.