One of the 61 detainees in anti-corruption operations in recent weeks in Venezuela died in police custody, said Thursday the attorney general, Tarek William Saab, who asserted that it was a suicide.
The Public Ministry appointed prosecutors to “investigate the unfortunate suicide of the citizen Leoner Azuaje Urrea in his place of confinement,” Saab published on Twitter when reporting the death.
Azuaje Urrea, 39, was brought before a court early Wednesday on charges of corruption at the state-owned Cartones de Venezuela, in the framework of anti-corruption operations that began last month. He was being held in the cells of the intelligence service (SEBIN) in Caracas.
The prosecutor’s office and the scientific police are carrying out “the technical inspection, the interviews and (the) legal autopsy,” Saab said.
The police operations that began the previous month have been centered around the state oil company Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), the heart of the battered Venezuelan economy.
The oil minister, the powerful Chavista leader Tareck El Aissami, resigned in the midst of the scandal, although Saab – questioned about it by the press – avoided confirming whether the authorities are investigating him.
According to a Saab balance sheet, 61 arrests and 172 searches were made during the investigations. According to that count, 20 arrest warrants remain to be completed.
Analysts agree in considering these operations as “a political purge” in the ruling Chavismo, in which, according to political scientist Ana Milagros Parra, “corruption has been systematic.”