For the third time, the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ) declared it appropriate to request the extradition to Venezuela of the former president of PDVSA, Rafael Ramireza position he held between 2004 and 2013, according to ruling 328 written by Judge Elsa Gómez.
On this occasion, the request is addressed to the Republic of Italy, where the former Oil Minister is based, according to the Public Ministry.
The facts for which the Venezuelan justice wants to try Ramírez are partially contained in a sentence of the Court of First Instance of Andorra, of November 30, 2012.
Said court established that Rafael Ramírez and his cousin Diego Salazar organized a system of commissions in relation to PDVSA’s public contracts, so that the companies that accepted the tenders were forced to contract with their business network and in that way be able to obtain awards, after canceling the millions of euros.
These contracts were held without complying with controls and regulations, says the Public Ministry.
The money received as a result of the commissions by the so-called “Salazar Group” between 2007 and 2012, was legitimized in the Private Bank of Andorra, according to an investigation by the Public Prosecutor’s Office of that European State.
And when Diego Salazar was called by the Private Bank of Andorra to explain the movement of funds, he confessed “to be dedicated to brokering the sale and purchase of oil, and stating that he was a partner of the citizen Rafael Ramírez Carreño, who occupied at the time the position of Minister of Energy”, says the judgment of the court of Andorra.
The criminal investigation initiated in Andorra, for the alleged felony of money or value laundering, also involves the other partners of the Ramírez Group, mostly Venezuelans: Luis Mariano Rodríguez Cabello, Estibaliz Basoa de Rodríguez, Nervis Gerardo Villalobos Cárdenas, Javier Alvarado Ochoa, Anna Piñero Carrabina, Cristina Lozano Bonet, Luis Pablo Laplana Moraes, José Luis Zabala and Omar Farias Luces.
The new request
This new request for extradition activated by the Public Ministry entered the Criminal Chamber on October 14. By that date, the current Oil Minister, Tarek El Aissami, had denounced, before the Attorney General’s Office, a new chapter in the corruption plot detected in PDVSA with the alleged participation of Rafael Ramírez. Indeed, on August 30, El Aissami went to the Public Ministry and handed over to its owner, Tarek William Saab, a bundle of documents.
But the main reason why the Prosecutor’s Office activated this new extradition is the laundering of money from the collection of commissions to grant contracts, a situation that is contained in a report dated November 30, 2017, issued by the National Police Against Corruption, carried out based on reports and reports issued by the Andorran Police, the Andorran Financial Intelligence Unit and the United States Department of the Treasury.
The report states that the sum laundered through company accounts that the Salazar Group kept in the Private Bank of Andorra, for the period from October 2011 to November 2012, reaches the amount of one billion three hundred and forty seven thousand three hundred and thirty nine thousand nine hundred and seventy-two Euros (€1,347,339,972).
The United States Department of the Treasury estimates that the Private Bank of Andorra facilitated the movement of approximately four million two hundred thousand dollars ($4,200,000.00) related to money laundering from Venezuela, the report states.
To launder the money from corruption and the collection of vaccines from PDVSA contractors, the Salazar Group opened 40 “instrumental entities” in Panama, Belize and the British Virgin Islands.
”These instrumental entities were used to manage and launder funds from corruption and fraudand hide the identity of their beneficiaries by trying to give the appearance of being commercial companies or technical and commercial advisory companies,” the report details.
For these reasons, the Public Ministry represented by prosecutor 28, Jhoanna Vanessa Borrego Ramírez, requested on September 7 a new deprivation of liberty against Rafael Ramírez for extradition purposes, for the crimes of malicious embezzlement, influence peddling, legitimization of capital and association.
That same day, the Sixth Court of Control of Caracas agreed to what was requested by the Public Ministry and forwarded the file to the Criminal Chamber.
The magistrates analyzed the approach, verified that all the requirements were met and declared the extradition request admissible.
The sentence establishes that “the Government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, through the Supreme Court of Justice, in the Criminal Cassation Chamber, assumes the firm commitment before the Italian Republic, that the aforementioned citizen will be prosecuted with due guarantees” .
Other extraditions
* The first extradition request to bring Rafael Ramírez to Venezuela was approved on August 17, 2018, according to sentence 258 of the Criminal Chamber. On that occasion, the request was addressed to the Kingdom of Spain, where it was certain that the former president of PDVSA was based there. The request was based on alleged irregularities detected in a contract between PDVSA and Petro-Saudi (September 2010) for the rental of a vessel for gas extraction in the Mariscal Sucre project. The contract was signed with a surcharge that reached 274%, according to the Prosecutor’s Office.
* On November 6, 2019, the new extradition procedure began, by virtue of the fact that Rafael Ramírez migrated from Spain to Italy. But that process was based on the same facts as the first extradition request, that is, the contract with an alleged premium between PDVSA and Petrosaudí.
* That second extradition process was sent to the TSJ on November 25, 2019 by the Control Court 10 of Caracas, but it was admitted to the Criminal Chamber four months later, specifically on March 12, 2020, according to what the authorities say. accounts. Subsequently, the Criminal Chamber took four months to decide, by approving sentence number 55, on July 29, 2020, which declared that extradition admissible.
