Verbal contracts, glassy transactions through companies, labyrinthine schemes to hide the money trail. And a loot transformed into exclusive homes… The former lawyer for Petróleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA) and financial director of the state company Electricidad de Caracas, Luis Carlos de León Pérez, collected 19 million dollars from the plot investigated for plundering 2,000 million from the Venezuelan public energy company. This is stated in a report from the Financial Intelligence Unit of Andorra (Uifand) to which Morning Express has had access and which is part of the investigations by a court of the Pyrenean principality into the looting of the oil company.
The former lawyer received part of his fortune through an intricate corporate network with tentacles in Panama, Switzerland and Andorra to which his wife, Andreina Gámez Rodríguez, belonged. The couple channeled 25 million and hatched a plan to acquire a luxurious property in Caracas of 4,000 square meters and four properties in Madrid. His investments in brick totaled nine million.
Most of the transfers that fueled the couple’s accounts – some justified under the cover of supposed “verbal contracts” – were ordered through instrumental companies (without activity). And, behind this mechanism, was the one who was Vice Minister of Energy in the Government of Hugo Chávez between 2004 and 2006, Nervis Villalobos. Another manna of funds reached the former PDVSA lawyer through the alleged front man of the network, Luis Mariano Rodríguez Cabello from Caracas, who moved 1,144 million through a racket of 11 secret accounts in Andorra, according to the documents.
Formed by around thirty former officials of the powerful state firm and former Chavista leaders, the network that looted PDVSA operated between 2007 and 2012. It included in its ranks prominent men of former President Hugo Chávez (1999-2013) such as former Vice Ministers of Energy Nervis Villalobos and Javier Alvarado . The group devised a scheme to hide the collection of illegal commissions. Some members allegedly received 10% from businessmen, especially Chinese, who obtained public contracts from the energy company and its subsidiaries. To hide the flow of funds, the plot moved its loot through an opaque web of accounts in the Banca Privada d’Andorra (BPA), 7,400 kilometers from Caracas. The framework offshore It circulated through thirty companies in Switzerland and Belize.
De León, Villalobos and Rodríguez Cabello are part of the thirty people prosecuted in 2018 by an Andorran court. They are accused of being part of a network that charged commissions to businessmen – mainly Chinese – in exchange for facilitating awards from the Venezuelan public energy company.
Former Chavista deputy minister Villalobos turned to his Panamanian instrumental company Lomond Overseas SA in August 2008 to sign a contract with one of the opaque companies of the former lawyer of the state firm, Ribston Investments. The alleged ruse served to justify a transfer of $5.5 million under the excuse of alleged “assistance” services.
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Through another company without Panamanian activity, Megana International Ltd, Villalobos also settled an alleged debt of eight million with the firm of the former PDVSA lawyer. In both transactions, Andorran investigators believe that it was a transfer of funds that did not correspond to a real activity, since neither Villalobos nor De León provided documents to prove their operations.
To hide the money, De León and his wife became clients of the BPA, the entity in which the PDVSA looters hid their loot of 2,000 million between 2007 and 2015.
The lawyer managed two accounts in this entity through instrumental companies and was the owner of a third encrypted account between 2008 and 2013. De León appeared before the bank in 2008 as a 48-year-old lawyer. He said that he chose the Pyrenean country – which until 2017 remained shielded by banking secrecy – for opacity and security. And he indicated that he planned to transfer funds quarterly to the BPA, where he planned to deposit between 2.5 and 5 million, according to Know Your Customer (know your customer, in English), a sort of third degree where the financial institution is explained the origin of the funds, according to the documents.
A brick emporium in Spain
De León’s wife, Andreina Gámez Rodríguez, a 47-year-old Venezuelan, controlled two accounts in the BPA in the name of instrumental companies between 2009 and 2014 and was the owner of a third. And when she landed at the bank, she reported that she needed to transfer a million euros to a company in Madrid to buy a property. Gámez Rodríguez was listed in 2010 as the sole administrator and owner of the Madrid real estate company Sansobino 1977. SL. In 2019, the last year that it presented its accounts, this company accumulated assets of 2.8 million, according to the Informa commercial platform.
Furthermore, according to the Spanish property registry, the Madrid company of De León’s wife acquired in 2011 a duplex home of 221 square meters and three parking spaces at number four Tahona Street in the Spanish capital. Gámez Rodríguez signed a contract in 2010 to acquire the property for 2.5 million.
The fixation with the brick did not stop there. In 2009, De León booked, through a Spanish real estate agency, two homes and four parking spaces valued at more than one million euros. And his wife signed a contract that same year to buy a third property in Madrid in the development known as Paseo de la Habana. The package included three parking spaces and cost 665,540 euros.
This newspaper has also had access to a purchase option contract that reveals the intention of the lawyer and his wife to take over the “Maricarmen” house in December 2012 in the city of Baruta, in the State of Miranda, Caracas. With a constructed area of 800 square meters, the property extends over an area of 4,000. The couple agreed to pay 5.2 million. The energy company’s lawyer turned to his financial network in Andorra, which served as a gateway to send funds to other members of the organization. His accounts transferred $8.4 million to the accounts of Villalobos and former Chavista Vice Minister of Energy Javier Alvarado.
Along with his puddles in Andorra, where he was prosecuted in 2018 for money laundering and belonging to a bribery network, De León links multiple fronts with justice. A Texas court issued an arrest warrant against him in 2017 and he was detained in Madrid. And in 2018 he was convicted of violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), according to a Houston prosecutor’s document cited by Infobae. Morning Express has tried without success to obtain the version of De León and his wife through his lawyers in Andorra.
investigacion@elpais.es
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