In Venezuela, the former Minister of Petroleum and former Vice President Tareck El Aissami and the former Minister of Economy and Finance Simón Alejandro Zerpa were arrested. They are accused of having stolen the equivalent of hundreds of millions of dollars from state coffers. According to the prosecutor’s office, they did not register the payments received for oil exports with the central bank, in order to keep the profits for themselves and other members of the criminal organization.
Recently many Venezuelan politicians and activists have been arrested, in what is seen as an attempt by authoritarian president Nicolás Maduro to secure victory in this year’s elections (which will not be democratic anyway).
El Aissami had been a close associate of Maduro and his predecessor Hugo Chávez. In 2023 he resigned as oil minister following an investigation into a case of corruption in the state oil company, which manages the country’s oil reserves, the largest in the world.
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