A total of 10 officials from the Ministry of Housing and Habitat were arrested for their alleged links with a criminal structure that evicted apartments to sell them in dollars, according to judicial sources.
The arrests were carried out during the last hours by agents of the Bolivarian National Police (PNB) assigned to the Directorate of Strategic and Tactical Actions, after a complaint from Vice Minister Carolina Cestari.
A first procedure was carried out in the Felipe Antonio Acosta urban planning, Coche parish, Libertador municipality, tower 17, apartment 2B, kilometer 8 of the Panamericana.
In that urban planning, Ada Nacary Llovera Castellanos (leader of the community and family committee) was arrested, as well as MinVivienda officials Liliana Rojas Franco, Lissette Del Valle Naranjo Bello, Deisy Yasmin Castillo Gaspar and Yesika Arlenis Suárez Moreno.
These people allegedly used to intimidate residents of the aforementioned urban development with firearms to force them to vacate the property, according to initial investigations.
Subsequently, the evicted apartment was allegedly re-awarded to a new owner who had previously paid between 5 and 7 thousand dollars, according to what was investigated.
In that case, while Ada Llovera (community head) carried out the arbitrary evictions, under threats and intimidation, simultaneously the MinVivienda officials were dedicated to expediting and enabling the process to reallocate the properties.
Line managers fell
A second police procedure took place at the headquarters of the Bolivarian Government Real Estate Agency, located in Las Mercedes, Baruta municipality (Miranda).
In that office they detained five MinVivienda officials identified as Peregrina Alejandrina Amor Morelo (director of Registry of the Vice Ministry of Popular Networks); Mary Yoselin Trejo Peñaloza (Director of Adjudication); Miguel Ángel Tovar Quijada (director of Monitoring and Control of the Vice Ministry of Popular Networks); Wilivaldo Manuel Goyo Ramírez (director of the Popular Builder School) and Karla Eduviges Sáenz Camacho (analyst).
In addition to the arrest of these people, PNB officials interviewed the vice minister for Communal Management of Habitat and Housing, María Luna, who reported on the partial results of an audit carried out on the system of those awarded to urban developments in the Gran Venezuela Housing Mission in the Capital District.
Some of the irregularities detected in the audit
8 cases of incongruent ID registrations: five have only two digits and three with duplicate digits.
3,382 duplicate IDs in the system: 486 cases of double benefit in different parishes, 2,841 cases with double registration, 53 cases with 3 registrations and 2 cases with four registrations.
Urban developments where records are not uploaded. For example, in the Ciudad Tiuna urban planning, Ezequiel Zamora sector, there are no records for towers 21, 13, 24, 25, 29, 30, 31, 32, 34, 39, 41, 42, 43, and only two records in the tower 44.
Finally, in that same office of the Bolivarian Government Real Estate Agency, Germán Antonio Medina Vargas was arrested, accused of having evicted a beneficiary of the Great Venezuela Housing Mission from his apartment located in tower 2, floor 9, Ciudad Tiuna (Los Rusos) , Coche parish, Libertador Bolivarian municipality.
Medina Vargas works at MinVivienda as an analyst.
In this procedure, they seized documents that reflect the alleged involvement of former Vice Minister Héctor Bastidas in property evictions to re-allocate them to those who paid sums in dollars.
The 78th Prosecutor’s Office in matters of corruption, headed by Antonio Rodríguez, was notified of the procedures.
