Billionaire Alejandro Andrade, former official of Hugo Chávez, sentenced in Florida
The style of life of the Andrade family was as spectacular as the economic aspect of the country that it left behind.
The family of Venezuelan immigrants lived in a mansion in Florida surrounded by horses of competition. The patriarch, Alejandro Andrade, was the bodyguard of President Hugo Chávez before rising to positions of power in his government. Andrade was sentenced on November 27 to 10 years in a US prison for accepting bribes as treasurer of Venezuela, in a money laundering that turned him into a multimillionaire.
Venezuela faces its worst economic crisis in modern history. Inflation and the devastating shortage of food and medicine have forced more than 3 million people in the country, according to the UN.
But among those who have left Venezuela there is a small camera that made incalculable fortunes, including government officials, leaders of good contacts and military leaders who diverted millions of dollars. Many arguments are based on the entrenched Venezuelan bases today.
The beneficiaries also have a nickname: the “boligarcas”, the term used for the new oligarchy that emerges in the “Bolivarian Revolution” of Chávez’s socialist inspiration.
“How can a government employee have 60 horses?” Said Franklin Hoet-Linares, a Venezuelan lawyer who lives a short distance from Andrade’s house near West Palm Beach, Florida.
The content of Andrade’s plea agreement and an indictment summarizing the bribes he received was recently revealed in a Federal District Court in Florida. Offer a look at how fortunes were amassed by Venezuela’s elite before moving to South Florida.
In his plea agreement, Andrade received more than one billion dollars in bribes.
US officials also imposed sanctions this year on Diosdado Cabello, one of Venezuela’s most powerful politicians, accusing him of drug trafficking, extortion and embezzlement of government funds. The Minister of Interior and Justice, Néstor Reverol, is accused of receiving payments to help drug traffickers transport cocaine. And the inner circle of President Nicolás Maduro, including his wife and his Minister of Defense, “systematically strips what remains of Venezuela’s wealth,” US officials say.
The case against Andrade is built around another Venezuelan billionaire living in Miami, Raúl Gorrín, owner of the Globovisión news network. Gorrín asked Andrade to help him secure the lucrative rights to make currency changes for the Venezuelan government, according to federal documents.
When Andrade received an invoice for $ 174,800 to transport his horses, he sent it to Gorrin, who paid it from his personal bank account in Switzerland. In 2012, Gorrín made an electronic transfer of 20 million dollars from a Swiss bank to buy a plane to Andrade, according to Andrade’s plea agreement.
The assets of Andrade have been seized. In 2012, shortly before Chavez died of cancer, Andrade moved to Florida.
There, the Andrades had a luxurious collection of horses with picturesque names like Bon Jovi and Hardrock Z. The daily life of Andrade’s son, Emanuel, competitor of the equestrian jump, is narrated on Instagram, where you can see photos of a lifestyle of the jet set.
Although the seizure of Andrade’s assets is a step in the right direction, said Hoet-Linares, it is far from sufficient.
“The most perverse thing about Venezuelan corruption is that the money they take internationally and in the United States does not go to Venezuela’s treasury,” he said.
© 2018 The New York Times
