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The Colombian businessman Álvaro Pulido, partner of the Venezuelan envoy Alex Saab, has been arrested in Venezuela. The government of Nicolás Maduro launched a massive anti-corruption operation in mid-March. In all, at least 58 people, some of them high-ranking, have been detained.
Álvaro Pulido, a Colombian businessman, was the main partner of Alex Saab, presented by the government of Nicolás Maduro as an emissary of the Venezuelan State, and imprisoned since October 2021 in the United States. Alex Saab and Álvaro Pulido Vargas -who also called himself Germán Enrique Rubio Salas- have been accused of corruption by a Florida court.
bribery and embezzlement
US justice accuses them and their accomplices of paying bribes and secret commissions to intermediaries in Venezuela to obtain lucrative government contracts.
The two men are suspected of, among other things, embezzling money from the Venezuelan government’s food aid program for the poorest residents. This program, called CLAP (Local Supply and Production Committees) was launched in 2016, when the country was sinking into unprecedented hyperinflation and a deep economic, social and political crisis. In February 2020, according to the World Food Program, a third of the population did not eat enough.
The two men are also suspected of embezzling about $1.5 billion from state oil company PDVSA, the website revealed this month. armando.infowhich is part of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).
What is known about his arrest?
A Venezuelan judicial source assured on Wednesday the Agence France-Presse (AFP) that Álvaro Pulido had indeed been detained, as announced in Spanish on Tuesday. At the moment, the Venezuelan authorities have not officially confirmed the information.
Until now, the US justice system promised a $10 million reward for any information that led to the arrest of this businessman linked “to the corrupt Maduro regime.”
The attorney general of Venezuela, Tarek William Saab, told the Colombian broadcaster W Radius at the end of March that Álvaro Pulido’s house in Caracas had been searched.
What is the magnitude of the current anti-corruption operation in Venezuela?
Since mid-March, at least 58 people have been detained and 18 more have arrest warrants, in a major anti-corruption operation, according to data from the Attorney General’s Office. Among the detainees are senior officials from the state oil company PDVSA, senior officials, directors of a state mining company and magistrates.
The full list of those detained on suspicion of corruption has not been made public.
Venezuelan authorities have not yet specified the amount of money allegedly embezzled. The Web armando.info He claims to have consulted documents that show more than 13,000 million dollars in unpaid invoices for oil deliveries made by PDVSA between 2019 and 2022 to dozens of different companies.
Is it an internal purge of the regime?
From a certain point of view, “we can say that it is a purge” between different factions of Chavismo, responds Mariano de Alba, principal investigator of the International Crisis Group. However, “this matter reveals the very high levels of corruption within the Government,” he underlines.
It occurs at a time when teachers have been demonstrating for several months to demand salary improvements in the face of one of the highest inflation rates in the world: 310% by 2022, according to the IMF.
“The fact that so much money has been lost in corruption when it could have been used to increase the salaries of civil servants – which are currently extremely low – puts Chavismo in a very bad position in the face of public opinion, as the country prepares to new presidential elections in 2024”, concludes the researcher, contacted by RFI.
