The results of a rigorous journalistic and judicial investigation have exposed the business plot linked to the financing of the so-called “Operation Gideon”, which in 2020 attempted to evict President Nicolás Maduro from power by force. The research was published by Revista Raya, which we reproduce in its entirety below:
Three years after the failed “Operation Gideon” the Francisco Barbosa Prosecutor’s Office has evidence, but does not accuse the Venezuelan businessmen who, from Barranquilla, where their oil companies are based, financed training camps in La Guajira where former Venezuelan soldiers were being prepared for overthrow President Nicolas Maduro in May 2020. Who is it?
By: Edinson Arley Bolaños
A hidden document from the Colombian Prosecutor’s Office, known by RAYA magazine, reveals the business network that was woven behind the failed “Operation Gideon” that sought, at the beginning of 2020, to carry out a coup against the president of Venezuela Nicolás Ripe Moors. The investigation, in which a dozen police investigators participated, collected testimonies and documents that put behind bars, a year later, Yacsy Alezandra Álvarez Mirabal, the woman who has been classified as the Venezuelan “Mata Hari” within the operational. However, two of the three mega-businessmen remain at large and have not been prosecuted by the Francisco Barbosa Delgado Prosecutor’s Office, despite the fact that the evidence was compiled and that the witnesses pointed to them as financiers, from their companies based in Barranquilla, in this international plot against Venezuela.
Álvarez is accused of having prepared all the logistics for a driver from the Coast to transport between Barranquilla and Santa Marta 26 5.56 caliber rifles, firearm silencers, 26 two-eye night vision goggles, 29 one-eye night goggles, 4 night binoculars , 438 Motorola batteries, 15 military helmets, 3 bulletproof vests, among other seized items that exposed the conspiracy.
The three businessmen, one of them captured in Caracas weeks after the war material fell in northern Colombia, have in common that they have been owners, partners or directors of the most important oil companies in Venezuela and which currently have their headquarters In Barranquilla. One of them is Jorge Luis Cordero García, owner of the company Veneco Colombia SAS and who, according to an email in the possession of the Prosecutor’s Office, issued a memorandum to be the co-signer in the lease of an urban house in Barranquilla which served as logistics. for all performances by Álvarez Mirabal. “This will allow the Prosecutor’s Office to prove its theory of the case, regarding the materiality of the crime of illegal carrying of weapons and the crime of training for illegal activities, as well as the participation of the accused in those events and her responsibility,” highlights one of the sections of the document written by an investigator of the Fiscal and Customs Police (Polfa) and which was used by the Prosecutor’s Office against Álvarez, but not against the businessmen.
Cordero García is a partner of another of the oil businessmen hidden in this plot: Ricardo Francisco Barreto Muskus. He currently resides in Miami, but one of his most important companies is based in Barranquilla. This is Solmico OIL SAS, a company that was incorporated in Barranquilla on February 26, 2014, in order to operate exclusively in free zones the refining of oil or hydrocarbons for the production of fuels, derivatives of crude oil and its mixes. This appears in the document as an ally of Álvarez Mirabal along with another Barreto Muskus company: Esquivenza SA, which would later be renamed Especialidades Quimicas Venoco SA, also based in Barranquilla.
According to the document in the possession of the Prosecutor’s Office, these companies are part of the financial network from which “presumably the money came out to finance the necessary expenses for the organization, planning and execution of the illegal training for which Yacsy Alexandra Álvarez was called to trial Mirabal”, the woman nicknamed the Venezuelan Mata Hari and who is currently being held in the La Picaleña prison in Ibagué. What’s more, the document says, the witnesses pointed to these companies as the source of the money that Álvarez gave to the ex-servicemen to cover living expenses.
According to the investigation of the journalist from the AP agency Joshua Goodman, who revealed this operation on May 1, 2020, there were more than 300 Venezuelan ex-militaries who were preparing in different camps located on the La Guajira peninsula. The one who trained them and is identified as the mastermind of the failed operation is Jordan Goudreau, a former US Green Beret who communicated in Barranquilla, through Álvarez’s translation, with a retired Venezuelan Army general: Cliver Alcalá, extradited to the United States and also accused of attempting to execute the coup together with Goudreau.
To do this, months before, in September 2019, Goudreau called several businessmen in Miami and Washington in order to seek financing for the failed operation. In exchange for this, the AP revealed, they were promised preferential access to negotiate agreements in the energy and mining sectors with a possible government of the self-proclaimed Venezuelan president Juan Guaidó, according to what one of the businessmen confessed to said news agency. At that time, the businessman Barreto Muskus had already given a special power of attorney from Miami to Jorge Cordero García so that he signed total or partial endorsements in Barranquilla on behalf of the Solmico company.
This section of history is important because the businessmen hidden until today were not only the most powerful in the mining sector in Venezuela, but also because since 2010 they became archenemies of President Hugo Chávez and his revolution. The reason: the expropriation of the country’s largest petrochemical company, Venoklim, after these businessmen were accused of speculating on prices and exploiting workers. Since then, it has been part of the state-owned Petróleos de Venezuela, SA, known as PDVSA. In fact, in 2014 Barreto Muskus, president of said petrochemical company, was blocked by officials of the Bolivarian National Guard from entering the company in the municipality of Guaraca, Carabobo state, as a result of the expropriation decision of the Supreme Court of Justice from Venezuela.
Regarding the businessman Barreto Muskus, it must also be said that he has been the historic president of Industrias Venoco CA, the largest umbrella company of another of the conspirators: Franklin Durán Guerrero, captured in Caracas on May 24, 2020 accused of financing the coup. State. According to a document issued by the Commercial Registry of the Oost Chamber of Commerce, in the south of the Netherlands, Barreto has also been a member of Venoklim’s Board of Directors since 2008. He was also the president of the Swedish company that controls Venoklim: International Petrokemiklim AB .
As we show in the following graph, Barreto was so close to Durán and his companies that he became the president of four of Venoklim’s subsidiaries: Lubricantes Venoco, ADINOVEN, Servicios Venoco and CANGL; In addition, he is the director of Química Venoco, the fifth subsidiary of Venoklim.
Despite all the evidence available to the Francisco Barbosa Prosecutor’s Office, the investigation and accusation only made progress against Yacsy Alexandra Álvarez Mirabal. In fact, the document held by RAYA magazine says that Banco de Occidente handed over to the Prosecutor’s Office the financial contract related to the acquisition of the NISSAN brand vehicle with IRY290 license plates, used to transport weapons and other items on March 23. of 2020 before being delivered to the captured driver Jorge Molinares in the Laura de Barranquilla building, purchased by the firm Solmico SA, of which Barreto Muskus is its legal representative. For said purchase, the document says, the company Veneco Colombia SAS, owned by Franklin Durán, was the co-signer.
Thus, the only one of the three businessmen who is currently captured in the Helicoide building in Caracas is Franklin Durán Guerrero, who was captured almost a month after the weapons fell in northern Colombia, accused of transporting from Miami to Barranquilla , in a plane of his property, to the ex-green beret Jordan Goudreau. The other two businessmen, Jorge Luis Cordero García and Ricardo Francisco Barrero Muskus enjoy full freedom, are not accused by the Colombian Prosecutor’s Office and still have their prosperous companies based in Barranquilla from where they disposed of their entire economic apparatus for the Venezuelan Mata Hari to execute logistics and allow mercenaries to enter Venezuela and seize power by force of arms. Had they succeeded, neither President Iván Duque nor the self-proclaimed Venezuelan president Juan Guaidó would later have denied participation in said conspiracy.
In fact, after the failure of the Gideon operation, the narrative they tried to build three years ago was that of the false flag, that is, that it was the Chavista regime itself that had orchestrated a self-coup. Proof of this is that one of the Venezuelans detained in Bogotá, a month after the failed operation, Jesús Ramón Rodríguez Guerrero, was labeled by Colombian intelligence and called by the national press as close to Chavismo. However, Rodríguez was one of those who received training, knew where the camps were and recruited former Venezuelan soldiers that he housed in the Siete de Agosto neighborhood in Bogotá. Almost eight months later, when the authorities captured Álvarez Mirabal, President Duque told the media that “criminals in our country who were trying to structure destabilization operations, people from Venezuela, promoted and financed by the government, had been captured.” dictatorial regime of Nicolás Maduro”.
Meanwhile, she pointed out that Colombian intelligence was aware of this operation because, she even assured, both she and General Alcalá were in constant communication with the National Intelligence Directorate (DNI) and mentioned two names: Franklin Sánchez and Jorge Miguel Padilla Ruiz, the latter director of intelligence and counterintelligence for the DNI, who a month before her capture requested security for her.
