Claudia Díaz, who was also a nurse for former President Hugo Chávez, was found guilty along with her husband, Adrián Velásquez, of receiving bribes from Venezuelan businessman Raúl Gorrín to give the green light to lucrative monetary transactions using the United States financial system.
Former national treasurer Claudia Díaz Guillén was found guilty on Tuesday the 12th of five counts of money laundering by a court in South Florida, United States.
Díaz Guillén, extradited to the United States in May of this year from Spain, was found guilty after the jury of the Southern District Court of Florida, in Fort Lauderdale, deliberated for a few hours, according to the news agency Associated Press.
The case related to bribes paid by businessman Raúl Gorrín, a billionaire Venezuelan media mogul, to greenlight lucrative monetary transactions when Díaz was serving as the country’s national treasurer.
Her husband, former presidential deputy Adrián Velásquez, was also found guilty of five of the six charges detailed in a 2020 indictment, alleging that they accepted at least $4.2 million in bribes.
The United States case relied heavily on the testimony of one of Díaz’s predecessors as treasurer, Alejandro Andrade, who took the witness stand to testify that the financial arrangement he achieved with Gorrín continued under the management of the former treasurer, who was also a private nurse for former President Hugo Chávez.
Like Díaz, Andrade took advantage of a personal connection with Chávez to rise through the ranks of the Venezuelan military and state, amassing a vast fortune almost overnight.
In 2021, he was released from prison after serving less than half of a 10-year sentence for his role in a massive scheme to siphon millions from state coffers. As part of his plea agreement, he forfeited more than $260 million in cash and assets, including a Palm Beach oceanfront mansion, luxury vehicles, show jumping horses, and several Rolex and Hublot watches.
The trial came as normally hostile relations between the US and Venezuela are beginning to unwind after the Trump-era policy of “maximum pressure” to remove the
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