THE UNITED STATES APPLIES THE PALERMO CONVENTION: CASTROCHAVISM IS ORGANIZED CRIME AND NOT POLITICS

Carlos Sánchez Berzaín
March 31, 2020

(Interamerican Institute for Democarcy) The United Nations’ convention against transnational organized crime, or “the Palermo Convention”, is being applied with accusations of narco-terrorist conspiracy and other crimes, made by the United States against Nicolas Maduro, Diosdado Cabello, Hugo Carvajal, Cliver Alcala, Luciano Marin Arango AKA Iván Marquez,  Seuxis Paucias Hernandez Solarte AKA Jesus Santrich, Tareck El Aissami, Vladimir Padrino, Maikel Moreno and others, announced this recently past 26^th of March.  The “mechanism to fight Transnational Organized Crime more efficiently” established jurisdiction in the United States’ justice system, thus formalizing the concept that “Castrochavism” is organized crime and not politics.

The aim of the Convention against transnational organized crime, signed in December of 2000 at Palermo, was best summarized by United Nations’ former General Secretary Kofi Annan who stated: “If crime crosses borders, so must law enforcement. If the rule of law is undermined not only in one country, but in many, then those who defend it cannot limit themselves to purely national means. If the enemies of progress and human rights seek to exploit the openness and opportunities of globalization for their purposes, then we must exploit those very same factors to defend human rights and defeat the forces of crime, corruption and trafficking in human beings.”

This is about the rule of law.  This is what the accusations of criminal wrongdoing filed in United States’ district courts are about, and the establishment of rewards; $15 million for information and the capture of Nicolas Maduro, $10 million for each Diosdado Cabello, Hugo Carvajal, Cliver Alcala, and Tareck El Aissami.  It is the beginning of justice’s actions against the organized crime that holds political power.  The enforcement of the law against criminals who usurp politics and political power to commit crime and remain scot-free.

The Palermo Convention had already been successfully used by the United States in the FIFA (International Federation of Associated Soccer) case, also known as “FIFA-GATE”.  In New York in May of 2015, forty-one people were accused of fraud, organized crime, and money laundering uncovered through FBI investigations.  There were other arrests in Switzerland as well as in other countries in South and Central America with unprecedented results.

The expansion of Cuba’s dictatorship, starting in 1999 when Hugo Chavez took Cuba out of its special period, took it to the establishment of dictatorships in Venezuela with Chavez/Maduro, Nicaragua with Daniel Ortega, Ecuador with Rafael Correa, and Bolivia with Evo Morales.  These regimes very soon thereafter were restructured as “narco-states” associated to the FARC’s guerrilla delinquency in Colombia.

The “narco-terrorist conspiracy” involving the production and trafficking of cocaine was undertaken by this criminal group who controlled the de-facto political power under the label of “21^st Century Socialism”, today known as “Castrochavism”.  Fidel Castro’s doctrine of the sixties and that of Che Guevara “to flood the United States with drugs to destroy its youth” was being replicated.   In a speech at the United Nations in April of 2016, Evo Morales asserted that “the fight against narcotics’ trafficking is an instrument of United States’ imperialism to oppress the peoples” and asked for the dissolution of the US-DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration).

In columns, books, and conferences I have asserted -and today I insist- in that criminals who hold or held power in countries with Castrochavism dictatorships do not enjoy any type of immunity  or privilege, nor are they protected by any concept of sovereignty, non-intervention, nor territoriality, because they are an “organized criminal group” (Article 2 of the Palermo Convention) who commit “serious crimes of a transnational nature” (Art. 2, Subparagraph 2).  This is not a political matter, neither is it a matter of international affairs.  This is a matter of justice, of transnational crime.

Cuba ratified the Palermo Convention on 9 February of 2007, Venezuela on 13 May of 2002, Nicaragua on 9 September of 2002, Ecuador on 17 September of 2002, and Bolivia on 10 October of 2005.  Castrochavism’ s structured organized crime group is not comprised only of Venezuelan and Colombian operators already accused, but also include; the heads in Cuba (who have been involved in narcotics’ trafficking since the 70’s/80’s with Pablo Escobar and Roberto Suarez), Ortega/Murillo and their organization in Nicaragua, Rafael Correa and his group in Ecuador, and Evo Morales and his criminal organization in Bolivia (still operating).

 

Published in Spanish by Infobae.com March 29, 2020

Translated from Spanish by; Edgar L. Terrazas, member of the American Translators’ Association, ATA # 234680.