How much and where is the money from the castroist-chavist corruption?

Carlos Sánchez Berzaín
december 19, 2017

(Interamerican Institute for Democracy) “Castro-Chavism” is the acronym for the transnational organization resulting from the union of Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez ruling leaders of Cuba and Venezuela that with the “subversive capabilities” of the Cuban dictatorship and Venezuelan “oil money”, since 1999 recreated and expanded the Castroist communism’s criminal, antidemocratic plan with an anti-imperialist discourse. One of its essential features is its functioning as organized crime that clearly identifies its perpetrators but at the same time it poses our need to establish the amounts and whereabouts of the moneys from the Castroist-Chavist corruption that must be returned to the nations victims of the plundering.

Castro-Chavism labeled itself as “the Bolivarian movement”, “ALBA Project”, and “21^st Century Socialism” occupied Argentina with the Kirchner’s regime and Brazil with Lula and Rousseff. It is presently made up by the regimes from Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua and formerly by Ecuador who is now -and based upon initial results- attempting to break away from it. Castro-Chavism controls countries that benefit from Venezuelan oil known as the “petro-caribe” countries, with whom it keeps a fragile and discredited position in the Organization of American States (OAS). It is involved in European politics as seen with its operation in Spain and it maintains an alliance with North Korea, China, Russia, Iran whose expansion into Latin-America was favored and promoted by it.

Corruption in organizations, especially in public institutions is defined as “the practice consisting of using their functions for the purpose of financial or other gains for the benefit of those who perform the function”. The term comes from the Latin “corruption, corruptionis” and from the prefix denoting the level of intensity “con -and rumpere” which means “to break, to shatter”. Corruption shatters and destroys society, the economy, democracy, and the government as shown in Cuba and Venezuela and where Bolivia and Nicaragua are headed and where poverty, crises and confrontation await.

In setting up and managing Castro-Chavism’s system, corruption is a key component in order to retain power in perpetuity. This enables for the building of complicities as though they were loyalties, cohesion and survival. It is the means for the enrichment of families and inner circles and for the creation of new groups of financial power with members from the regime. It is part of the methodology for a political control that creates complicities, attracts the greedy and unscrupulous into a new corrupt bourgeoisie. It is about the building of an authentic system of organized crime with a “mask of politics and management”.

The corruption created by Castro-Chavism –because without the political power of Lula and Chavez this would have not been possible- that we know today as the Odebrecht case, has revealed that only in Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Mexico, Panama, and Peru the amount of corruption nears two-billion dollars. Brazil, Venezuela, and the Dominican Republic have the higher amounts.

Up to now Cuba’s regime’s corruption with Odebrecht has not been dealt with regarding the construction project at the port of Mariel of which investigative reporting from the press reveal has had a 300% of cost overruns.   Up to now corruption from overpricing and cost overruns by the other remaining Brazilian construction companies (OAS, Andrade Gutiérrez, Queiroz Galvao, and others) has neither been dealt with. These companies had mega projects in Bolivia and other countries such as the construction of the highway that invaded the indigenous protected reserve known as TIPNIS, and were responsible for the political persecution and death of the Director of the Bolivian National Highway Service Jose Maria Bakovic, who was determined to stop the Morales-Lula corruption scheme.

Investigative reporting by “El País” reveal that only from the state-owned company Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) “former ministers and strawmen of politicians from the government of Venezuela during the presidency of Hugo Chavez (1999-2013) hid more than two-billion Euros in Andorra”.   The Government of the United States has imposed sanctions upon members of the Venezuelan dictatorship and has frozen billions of dollars’ worth of assets that have as their sole origin the exercise of dictatorial political power and that have obviously resulted from corruption.

Castroist-Chavist investments proliferate in democratic countries under the umbrella of freedom and capitalism which the novo rich fight and kill in the countries they have subjugated and from where they obtain their illicit wealth. Law abiding citizens have no doubt of the corruption by the Kirchner’s in Argentina and Lula in Brazil and with the return to conditions of democracy in those countries their legal prosecution goes forward and now there are those who have been legally charged and jailed. Peru has former President Humala and his wife jailed, former President Alejandro Toledo is wanted, and the current President PPK is on the verge of impeachment.

The clear signal is that when there is “respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms”, the “Rule of Law”, “division and independence of the branches of government”, “freedom of the press” (essential components of democracy), there are prosecutions and sentencing of those who are corrupt as shown in Argentina, Brazil, Peru, the United States, Canada, Europe.   Where Castro-Chavism is the ruler there are biased courts that clearly show they are protecting the culprits such as in the Dominican Republic, Colombia, El Salvador. Where there are chances of breaking away from Castro-Chavism, as in Ecuador, we see initial signals such as the sentencing of the Vice-President. Where the Castroist-Chavist dictatorships continue, such as in; Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua, the coverup is overwhelming.

In all of the countries that have been impacted by Castro-Chavism people ask; “how much is the amount of corruption?”, “how and when will the money from corruption be recovered?”. Without any doubt the first thing that must be done is to put an end to the Castroist-Chavist dictatorships that illegally hang-on to power driven by their need to remain unpunished.

Published in Spanish by Diario las Américas on Sunday December 17th, 2017