VENEZUELAN DICTATORSHIP, FROM POLITICS TO ORGANIZED CRIME

Carlos Sánchez Berzaín
agosto 15, 2017

(Interamerican Institute for Democracy) Events shown in images and documents that display the reality of Venezuela are proof to the world of the daily perpetration of flagrant crimes committed by a government that has become a criminal mob that acts deliberately and criminally in order to gain direct political and economic benefits and gloat from impunity. This mob, with Nicolas Maduro at the helm, with foreign intervention and with crime as its primary means, has total control of the government and reaps incalculable amounts of money from corruption and narcotics trafficking. This situation is no longer political strife because “Venezuela’s dictatorship is a mob of organized crime”.

At some point in time, perhaps from its beginnings, but certainly long time ago, Venezuela’s governments shifted from being a “political organization” to became a mob of “organized crime”. Political parties and organizations are “institutions of public interest that promote the people’s participation in the democratic life of a state” their objectives are legal and their activities are regulated by laws framed in the “Rule of Law”. By contrast, a criminal mob is a “group of three or more persons who seeks to gain objectives of wealth, power, and dominance through the commission of crime.” The criminal organization becomes “organized crime” or “organized delinquency” when it has ties with, or is the government, in order to be immune to prosecution.

With these simple and universally binding concepts affirmed by the United Nations Organization (UN) no one can doubt that the Venezuelan dictatorship with Nicolas Maduro as its head and under Cuban intervention, is a criminal organization, a criminal mob of organized crime, comprised by criminals who used and still use political power to commit innumerable crimes that the world sees in real time through the international news media and social networks. We are witnessing the existence of true criminals who enjoy the criminal, recurrent, simultaneous and institutionalized support from the political power of a “de-facto” government.

The convention against “Transnational Organized Crime” also known as “The Palermo Convention” adopted in 2000, became effective on 29 September of 2003 and was ratified by; Venezuela on 13 May 2002, Cuba on 9 February of 2007, Bolivia on 10 October of 2005, Ecuador on 17 September of 2002, Nicaragua on 9 September of 2002, and by more than 150 countries. In its Annex 1, Article 2 “Definitions” it states that “by Organized Criminal Group it shall be understood to mean a group of three or more persons who exist during a certain time and who deliberately act with the objective of committing one or more serious crimes, or crimes typified by this Convention, for the purpose of obtaining, directly or indirectly, monetary or other material gain”. Political power is a great and direct material gain because it enables the criminal organization to function and to cover up its crimes.

Maduro and his Castroist-Chavist government -which changed from being a political identifier to become a criminal identifier- have committed and continue to commit crimes to illegitimately enrich themselves through; corruption that ranges from active as well as passive bribery in public institutions such as PDVSA, bribes in construction contracts such as those from Odebrecht, embezzlement of national resources such as the distribution of money and exchanges in Cuba, Ecuador, Bolivia, Nicaragua, and El Salvador, or squandering the country’s oil resources in the case of Petrocaribe. Other crimes continuously committed are; the signing of onerous Chinese contracts, issuance of public debenture bonds, governmental contracts for costly Public Affairs services and lobbies, the government’s overpriced purchases of unnecessary weapons, the destruction of the national Estate and economy; attributing to itself the rights of the people, having an undisclosed foreign debt…

This group of organized crime perpetrates crime against the physical well-being of the people, assassinations, kidnappings, illegal incarcerations, false accusations attributing their criminal acts to the victims to whom it jails or forces into exile. It has irregular armed groups of thugs with whom it terrorizes the population, it has destroyed political organizations, planned and executed crimes involving material and ideological falsehood, supplanted legislation and committed electoral fraud. Time and again it violates the freedom of the press and freedom of speech, confiscates, usurps, and forces the sale of private property, has feigned to have contracts and has committed all sorts of crimes contemplated in the criminal prosecution code. This group has turned Venezuela into a hub for the trafficking of drugs transforming the country into a “narco-state” with “cartels” internationally identified and comprised by prominent members -both civilian as well as military- from the Venezuelan government (Organized Crime group).

Citing some of these crimes is only to enunciate some but by no means all, because it would appear that there is no crime the Castroist-Chavist apparatus has not committed in Venezuela. Citing these crimes are for the purpose of reiterating their flagrancy, many of them have already been corroborated with proof, and almost all have been covered up by the ruling political power that owns the organized criminal group and controls the justice system that has become a branch of the organized criminal group.   Controlling the justice system and enjoying impunity have given the Castroist-Chavist apparatus the unquestionable condition of being an “organized criminal group” with the dictator Maduro who -in reality- is nothing more than a “Capo Mafiosi” who looks to indefinitely hang on to power in order to remain unpunished.

Internationally, the situation is even more dangerous when we realize the Castroist-Chavist organized criminal group in Venezuela is only the main operation of the transnational criminal group led by the Cuban dictatorship with similar situations in Bolivia with Evo Morales, Ecuador with Rafael Correa (¿Moreno?), Nicaragua with Daniel Ortega, the Kirchner’s in Argentina and Lula da Silva in Brazil, amongst others. A transnational group that turned politics into crime and the governments into organized criminal groups, with proof everywhere. They believe they cannot be judged as long as they are in power and they hold on to it precisely to continue committing crime and have impunity.

Published in Spanish by Diario las Américas on Sunday August 13th, 2017

Translated from Spanish by Edgar L. Terrazas, Member of American Translators Association ATA # 234680.