According to documents reviewed by AP, the former mayor of Guanta is accused of paying bribes for the benefit of an unnamed accomplice, through which he favored signing projects with energy companies that earned him at least $10 million
One of the long-standing allies of Chavismo, Jhonnathan Marín, joined the list of “traitors” persecuted and whipped by the red dome with accusations of corruption on their backs.
A member of the Movimiento V República (MVR) since 2002 and mayor of Guanta (municipality of Anzoátegui) between 2008 and 2017, Marín disappeared from the radar of Chavismo to flee from the accusations launched by the government of Nicolás Maduro against him in 2019.
After staying in Mexico doing business even with the Mexican government, he reappeared in Miami on April 25, 2022 to surrender to US justice.
According to a Associated Press (AP) agency reportthe former Chavista official turned himself in and was released the same day on $100,000 bail.
Now he faces a judicial process with charges of conspiracy to commit a crime against the United States, for which a sentence of less than five years in prison is stipulated.
According to documents reviewed by the AP, Marín is accused of paying bribes for the benefit of an unnamed accomplice, through which he favored signing projects with energy companies that earned him at least $10 million.
The contracts included projects in the Orinoco Oil Belt in which companies such as the American Chevron or the French Total participated, as well as a handful of Russian and Chinese companies.
*Also read: Former workers of the Orinoco Oil Belt will deliver a document to the CPI
In the United States, specifically, he is accused of helping to launder more than $1.2 million that he transferred from a bank in Miami to another in Panama, in an operation that would have benefited two unidentified Venezuelan government officials.
The last thing that was known about the former mayor of Guanta prior to his surrender is that he had, with his wife Esneidy Villanueva, at least three companies related to the pharmaceutical and oil sectors in Mexico.
After escaping from Venezuela due to the arrest warrant issued by the Public Ministry in 2019, Villanueva created a company called Neurova Life SA de CV, with the business name of “buying, selling, importing and marketing medicinal, naturopathic products, medicines, in addition to of medical supplies and hiring of personnel related to the sector”.
This company received in March 2021, in the midst of the management against covid-19 by the Mexican government, a contract for 817,000 pesos ($40,000) to provide the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS) with 361,000 masks.
According to a report published in Runrunes, Marín Sanguino’s wife created two more companies almost at the same time as Neurova Life where she appears as a partner; one that also has the property of being able to market medicines and hospital supplies and another where it offers services for mining and oil activities.
The three companies were registered in a period of three weeks, between March 24 and April 14, 2020, with the same notary public, Amando Mastachi Aguario, head of Notary 121, currently with offices in Paseo de la Reforma.
AP notes that the former mayor of Guanta is represented by attorney Michael Nadler, a former prosecutor in Miami who gained some prestige for investigating the inner circle of corruption in the ranks of the government of Nicolás Maduro.
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