Flayer posted:

Bolton does say what the title of the video is saying. Yes, it is a pro-Russian news service but we're talking about the content of the video here.

Temaukel posted:

lmao

Discendo Vox posted:

What do you think the video shows. What do you think it means by captioning it "Admitted. Officially."

quote:

“It will make a big difference to the United States economically if we could have American oil companies invest in and produce the oil capabilities in Venezuela,” Bolton told Fox News in an interview this week.

Moridin920 posted:

And yet, no one in D&D apparently wants to post any evidence. This subforum has gotten so dumb. Just nonstop ad hominems and cheerleading.

Temaukel posted:

lmao

Moridin920 posted:

Forget about the video

AFancyQuestionMark posted:

There is no ironicat big enough for this post.

Discendo Vox posted:

No. I'm not going to stop making note of the sourcing of these messages.

Discendo Vox posted:

What do you think the video shows. What do you think it means by captioning it "Admitted. Officially." How is posting it, without any discussion of its content or sourcing, an example of "talking about the content of the video"?

Discendo Vox posted:

What do you think the video shows. What do you think it means by captioning it "Admitted. Officially."

Moridin920 posted:

It means that Bolton, an official of the US government, is openly stating their intent to privatize public assets in Venezuela.

Rust Martialis posted:

Could you cite the exact time in the video Bolton says the above, please?

WAR CRIME GIGOLO posted:

I know this is crazy but venezuelan oil output is down over 70% due to rampnt theft of maintenance contravts and everything elsem So it might be a good idea to get the oil flowing so we can get the economy started again. From a business standpoint were looking at a dotustion that needs to be carefully assisted. Getting the venezuelan debt onntje right track wil bring in morr funding. But its very difficult to not get thrown back into a dictator cycle if your economy is left to rot after power change.

Venezuelan oil has been left to rot and needs to be restarted if you want anyone to get fed. Dropping food from the sky is not the way to make a self sufficient country.

Moridin920 posted:

Assertion: Maduro embezzles millions if not billions.

Evidence?

quote:

SAO PAULO - Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro awarded a Brazilian construction giant at the heart of a huge corruption scandal across Latin America almost $4 billion for public works in exchange for campaign donations, the newspaper Estado reported Sunday.

The payments to Odebrecht came to light in reports and documents as part of a Brazilian investigation.

The documents in question are in the possession of prosecutors in Brazil and Venezuela, the newspaper said.

According to the documents, Maduro considered the payments — not included in the Venezuelan budget — “very urgent.”

“In exchange for $35 million for the campaign in 2013, the president (Maduro) gave ‘priority’ to extraordinary funds to cover the Odebrecht works,” the newspaper said.

Venezuela’s top prosecutor, Tarek William Saa,b has previously ruled out an investigation against Maduro.

“We are not going to work on speculation,” he told AFP last August, after his predecessor, Luisa Ortega Diaz — who fled the country following her dismissal — said she was investigating the president and his inner circle.

According to the documents, Maduro started awarding the huge payments less than a month after he was elected in April 2013.

quote:

The preparation of a formal accusation against Diosdado Cabello , president of the National Assembly of Venezuela and number two of Chavez, has accelerated in the US federal prosecutor with the arrival yesterday in Washington, as a protected witness, Leamsy Salazar , who until his departure of Caracas in December was the head of security of Cabello.

Member of the Military House, in charge of presidential custody, Salazar was for almost ten years the head of security and personal assistant of Hugo Chávez . After his death, his services were required by the president of the National Assembly, for whom he also acted as personal assistant. Salazar is the highest ranking military officer (corvette captain, comparable to commander) who breaks with Chavismo to formally accuse in the United States of criminal practices to the highest hierarchies in the country, especially that related to drug trafficking.

quote:

A web of former Venezuelan officials and businessmen was charged in Miami Wednesday with operating a massive $1.2 billion international money-laundering racket funded with stolen government money that was invested in South Florida real estate and other assets.

The defendants are accused of embezzling funds from Venezuela’s vast oil income and exploiting its foreign-currency exchange system to amass illegal fortunes in the United States and other countries, according to a federal criminal complaint.


The complaint describes a Venezuelan government culture in which officials, politicians and businessmen connected to President Nicolás Maduro and his predecessor, the late Hugo Chávez, have plundered the national oil company, PDVSA, to enrich themselves while impoverishing the South American country.
. . .
To leverage their profits, the defendants took advantage of their access to the Venezuelan government’s foreign-currency exchange system, which offers a far more favorable rate than the everyday market. It was used to convert bolivars to dollars and euros as the defendants stole from the country’s oil riches for overseas investments in Florida, Europe and other parts of the world. The favorable exchange-rate spread would result in illicit profits of tens of millions of dollars for each transaction.

The Homeland Security Investigations’ case unsealed Wednesday is unrelated to another major money-laundering probe underway that targets a former high-ranking Venezuelan official close to the late President Chávez. That probe also takes aim at other former senior officials and financial figures who collaborated with them.

The Miami Herald and el Nuevo Herald reported in March that Alejandro Andrade, a former bodyguard to Chávez who rose to the rank of national treasurer between 2007 and 2010, is suspected of laundering millions of dollars stolen from the Venezuelan government to invest in real estate, show horses and other assets in South Florida and elsewhere, according to sources in Miami and former Venezuelan government officials familiar with the investigation.

quote:

Two nephews of Venezuela’s first lady have been sentenced to 18 years in prison following their convictions in New York on drug conspiracy charges.

The US district judge Paul Crotty sentenced the two men, Franqui Francisco Flores de Freitas, 32, and Efraín Antonio Campo Flores, 31, at a hearing in federal court in Manhattan. The two are cousins, both nephews of Cilia Flores, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s wife.
. . .
Flores de Freitas and Campo Flores were arrested in Haiti in November 2015 in a US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) sting operation. Prosecutors said in a court filing they tried to make $20m through drug trafficking to help keep their family in power.

Campo Flores and Flores de Freitas were convicted in November 2016 by a jury of conspiring to import cocaine into the United States.

Lawyers for the two men said in a court filing earlier this year that prosecutors had proven only “bungling discussions of a drug plot that could never actually have been executed”.

Days after the conviction, Maduro blasted the case in a speech as an instance of “US imperialism”. Maduro has frequently cast US accusations of drug trafficking as a pretext for meddling in Venezuela and trying to topple him.

Moridin920 posted:

Assertion: Maduro embezzles millions if not billions.

Evidence?

quote:

A panel of eight journalists, scholars and activists expert in fighting corruption chose Maduro for the global award on the strength of his corrupt and oppressive reign, so rife with mismanagement that citizens of his oil-rich nation are literally starving and begging for medicines.

As murder and crime in Venezuela has skyrocketed and political oppression has intensified, the president and his inner circle, including wife Cilia Flores, have extracted millions from state coffers to cover the patronage that keeps him in power.

The Financial Times dubbed him Venezuela’s “Lord of Misrule” in dissecting his performance. Reporters Without Borders named him a “Press Freedom Predator” for his ingenuity in silencing critical media. He has had friends buy up key outlets, orchestrated newsprint shortages, and criminalized articles that “call into question legitimately constituted authority.”

quote:

“It’s been a big year for Maduro,” said Drew Sullivan, editor of OCCRP and one of the judges. “I think this year has been the tipping point and his negligence, incompetence and corruption are the cause. When a country’s leader can watch his people starve and still oversee a government stealing $70 billion a year all while his family deals drugs, it’s a special kind of evil. He deserves this prize.”
Maduro, a former bus driver and trade union leader who served as foreign minister under President Hugo Chavez, rose to the presidency when Chavez died in 2013. The increasingly isolated president claims to speak to his predecessor’s spirit through a “little bird.” He has ruled mostly by fiat, waving off legislative action and quashing the mounting citizen protests.

In November, a jury in New York convicted two of Flores’ nephews in a multimillion-dollar drug scam designed to raise funds to keep the family in power. The nephews plotted to use the presidential hangar at a Venezuelan airport to ship 800 kilograms of cocaine to the US through Honduras.

quote:

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is under investigation as part of a U.S. probe into a massive scheme that authorities say has pilfered more than $1 billion from the state-owned oil company, PDVSA, the Miami Herald has learned.

Maduro has not been named or charged in a criminal complaint filed in Miami federal court this week that detailed the international money-laundering conspiracy. But sources familiar with the investigation say he and other government officials and associates — including his three stepsons — are being investigated for any links to a network that prosecutors believe has plundered Venezuela’s national oil company and funneled vast amounts of cash into European and U.S. banks as well as South Florida real estate and other assets.

“Everything runs through him,” said one person familiar with the investigation, describing Maduro as a principal suspect of the U.S. investigation.

Even if Maduro, who became president after Hugo Chávez’s death in 2013, is ultimately charged, it’s unlikely he would be brought to the U.S. for prosecution. But the probe could add to the political challenges already facing the embattled president. Maduro has been the focus of months of protests over his country’s failing economy. The once oil-rich nation has been wracked by hyperinflation, widespread hunger and violence. Thousands of Venezuelans have fled the country.

Though Maduro is not mentioned by name in the criminal complaint filed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office on Wednesday, there are references to him as “Venezuelan Official 2” and to his stepsons, according to multiple sources familiar with the probe. His stepsons — Yosser Gavidia Flores, Walter Gavidia Flores and Yoswal Gavidia Flores — though also unnamed are described by the sources as receiving an estimated $200 million in funds stolen from the nation’s national oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela, S.A., or PDVSA, that were wired to a European bank in late 2014 and early 2015.

The deposits for his three stepsons — the grown children of Maduro’s wife, Celia Flores, from previous relationships — were among 10 wire transfers totaling about $600 million, according to a Homeland Security Investigations criminal complaint.

The affidavit says the wire transfers were made from PDVSA, with about $265 million going to accounts linked to the complaint’s lead defendant, Francisco Convit Guruceaga, a Venezuelan billionaire businessman. He and other members of the wealthy class are often referred to as the “boliburgués,” an elite politically connected group in Venezuela. An unnamed conspirator also received some of the money, according to the affidavit filed by Assistant U.S. Attorney Francisco Maderal.

Roughly $200 million went to the “chamos” — Spanish for stepsons — of Venezuelan Official 2. Sources say that Venezuelan Official 2 is Maduro.

Court documents say another $80 million went to “Conspirator 7.” Sources familiar with the affidavit told the Miami Herald that Conspirator 7 is Raúl Gorrín, owner of the Globovision television network in Venezuela. Gorrín, who has close ties to Maduro and the late president Chávez, has been sharply criticized for turning a pro-opposition news network into one more friendly to the president.

In late 2017, Gorrín tried to broker an exit strategy with the Trump administration for Venezuela’s beleaguered government, according to various Washington sources, by peddling the idea that Maduro and other key government leaders might be willing to negotiate a transition in Venezuela in exchange for amnesty. He also retained Ballard Partners — the firm of President Donald Trump’s former Florida lobbyist — ostensibly to help his Venezuelan TV network company expand into U.S. markets.

Gorrín’s lawyer in Miami, Howard Srebnick, denied any wrongdoing by his client, who has not been charged in the criminal complaint. “Mr. Gorrín is a successful media mogul who has not been involved in any money laundering,” Srebnick told the Miami Herald in a text message.

The eight defendants named in the complaint are accused of embezzling funds from Venezuela’s vast oil income and exploiting its foreign-currency exchange system to amass illegal fortunes in the United States and other countries. To leverage their profits, the defendants took advantage of their access to the Venezuelan government’s foreign-currency exchange system, which offers a far more favorable rate than the everyday market. It was used to convert bolivars to dollars and euros as the defendants stole from the country’s oil riches for overseas investments in Florida, Europe and other parts of the world.

The Venezuelan information ministry in Caracas could not be reached by phone.

Among the defendants is a German national arrested Tuesday at Miami International Airport who manages “banking” activities for numerous Venezuelan officials — Matthias Krull, 44, a Panamanian resident who worked as a banker in Switzerland. His defense attorney, Oscar S. Rodriguez, declined to comment on Friday. Krull is being held at the Miami Federal Detention Center.

Another defendant, Gustavo Adolfo Hernandez Frieri, 45, a Colombian-born naturalized U.S. citizen, was arrested in Italy on Wednesday and is expected to be extradited.

Hernandez is accused of using his Miami financial firm, Global Securities Advisors, and another firm, Global Strategic Investments, to launder money with false mutual-fund investments. A Homeland Security investigator says in the affidavit that the two brokerage companies, which are listed as having offices at 701 Brickell Ave., are “affiliated” and were used by Hernandez for meetings with members of the money-laundering network.

Representatives of Global Strategic Investments insist Hernandez has had no involvement in the firm, which is headed by Hernandez’s brother, Cesar.

The alleged money-laundering conspiracy began in December 2014 with a currency-exchange scheme to embezzle $600 million from PDVSA obtained through bribes and fraud, the complaint says. The defendants used an associate, who would later become a confidential source for the feds, to launder a portion of the PDVSA funds. By May of 2015, the conspiracy had doubled to $1.2 billion embezzled from Venezuela’s national oil company.

In early 2016, the associate approached Homeland Security investigators in Miami about cooperating and becoming a confidential source, the complaint says. The source agreed to wear a recording device to launder $78 million in PDVSA funds that he had received from a loan contract with the national oil company.

The federal probe, called Operation Money Flight, was launched with the initial focus on the defendants’ efforts to launder a portion of the $78 million. That investigation uncovered the broader money laundering, according to the affidavit.

Moridin920 posted:

Moridin920 posted:

Assertion: Maduro embezzles millions if not billions.

Evidence?

Flavahbeast posted:

I don't think it even has to go as far as mass murder though - if the source of the food shortage is food being hoarded in warehouses, just seize those warehouses! If that's the reason Venezuelans are going hungry then the solution is obvious

quote:

One South American businessman said he paid millions in kickbacks to Venezuelan officials as the hunger crisis worsened, including $8 million to people who work for the current food minister, Gen. Rodolfo Marco Torres. The businessman insisted on speaking anonymously because he did not want to acknowledge participating in corruption.

Last July, he struggled to get Marco Torres’s attention as a ship full of yellow corn waited to dock.

“This boat has been waiting for 20 days,” he wrote in text messages seen by AP.

“What’s the problem?” responded Marco Torres.

Although money was not mentioned, the businessman understood that he needed to give more in kickbacks. In the end, he told the general, the boat had to pull out because costs caused by the delay were mounting.

Bank documents from the businessman’s country show that he was a big supplier, receiving at least $131 million in contracts from Venezuelan food ministers between 2012 and 2015. He explained that vendors like him can afford to pay off military officials because they build huge profit margins into what they bill the state.

For example, his $52 million contract for the yellow corn was drawn up to be charged at more than double the market rate at the time, suggesting a potential overpayment of more than $20 million for that deal alone.

The Food Ministry’s annual report shows significant overpayments across the board, compared to market prices. And the prices the government pays for imported foods have been increasing in recent years, while global food prices remain stable.

This spring, the opposition-controlled congress voted to censure Marco Torres for graft. Maduro vetoed it as an attempt to hurt the Food Ministry, and Marco Torres stayed on as minister.

Internal budgets from the ministry obtained by AP show the overpayment continues. For example, the government budgeted for $118 million of yellow corn in July at $357 a ton, which would amount to an overpayment of more than $50 million relative to prices that month.

“It’s like drug trafficking you can carry out in broad daylight.”
“What’s amazing about this is it’s like a clean form of corruption,” said Carabobo state lawmaker Neidy Rosal, who has denounced food-related government theft worth hundreds of millions of dollars. “It’s like drug trafficking you can carry out in broad daylight.”

Marco Torres did not respond to several requests for comment by phone, email and hand-delivered letter. In the past, he has said that he will not be trapped in fights with a bourgeoisie opposition.

AFancyQuestionMark posted:

"I am not going to do your research for you."

Moridin920 posted:

I don't think I said that even once to you in the other thread.

Moridin920 posted:

And yet, no one in D&D apparently wants to post any evidence. This subforum has gotten so dumb. Just nonstop ad hominems and cheerleading.

AFancyQuestionMark posted:

There is no ironicat big enough for this post.

Truga posted:

Also,
https://twitter.com/IntheNow_tweet/status/1090670102209544192

Saladman posted:

Lol, Bolton calls Venezuela one of the "troika of tyranny." What a loving jackass. I guess his other two are DPRK and Iran? As if there aren't at least a couple dozen other dictatorships with at least as bad civil rights violations and suppression of the population as Maduro. Maduro and the PSUV are more economically incompetent than most dictatorships, but he's definitely not in the top 3 for world's tyrants. I still imagine (/ hope) that if people start starving to death in significant numbers, then he would not pull a Stalin/Derg and go full genocide on his population. Unfortunately I imagine the new sanctions are reasonably likely to push that date forward, unless the international food aid somehow gets into the country (and / or drives another mass drive to Cúcuta).

Squalid posted:

Honestly the evidence for massive corruption at the highest levels of the Venezuelan government is so enormous I'm surprised anyone would bother to dispute it. Seems much more practical to make an argument like "Oh all latin American nations are corrupt, America only cares in this case because of socialism. Why is it that US prosecutors talk about how the entire PSUV leadership is involved in drug trafficking when Desi Bouterse, the President of Suriname, has already been convicted of cocaine smuggling by the Netherlands?" That argument at least fits with observable reality. Instead we have a bunch of mucks burying their heads in the sand and screaming No Evidence! Whenever anyone points out the massive criminal enterprise that permeates all aspects of the Venezuelan government.

CAPS LOCK BROKEN posted:

So the African Union came out in favor of Maduro, I’m sure this will get the rapt attention of the western media who breathlessly reported on such important powers as *checks notes* Austria demanding Maduro leave.

Moridin920 posted:

When has the USA ever cared about violating international law?

Squalid posted:

Too much money is being made on the shortages to care about any of that:

https://apnews.com/69e87948759d4f0ab81326718bf89032

quote:

In 2012, I applauded Venezuela’s use of electronic voting machines as exemplary in the world,” said former U.S. President Jimmy Carter. “That characterization since has been misused by Nicolas Maduro to suggest a broad validation of Venezuela’s election system as a whole and of subsequent elections that The Carter Center did not observe. In fact, The Carter Center and others routinely have expressed concern about government interference in recent electoral processes. The Carter Center has not observed elections formally in Venezuela since 2004.

Silver2195 posted:

What is the significance of this supposed to be, exactly? Less than half of all AU members are democracies, so I don't think this has much bearing on Maduro's democratic legitimacy, and not many AU members have much power to influence the situation than Austria does.

CAPS LOCK BROKEN posted:

That nonwestern countries are overwhelmingly on maduros side, unlike “western democracies” currently engaged in overthrowing his government.

Furia posted:

Which other countries are on Maduro’s side?

Reminder that Russia and China are imperialist interests and you will be mocked for defending them

CAPS LOCK BROKEN posted:

The entire African Union, India, Mexico, etc.

GoluboiOgon posted:

Thank you for posting this. I'm not sure that this is the best source tho. It relies too much on the anonymous testimony of a large food importer. He complains about paying $8m in bribes to the government on a >$130m food contract, but then later provides evidence that the government is paying twice the market price for corn. So he is presumably overcharging by >65m (ostensibly to cover bribes), giving 8m to the government, leaving a surplus of > 50m for himself. Accepting kickbacks from this sort of deal is of course bad and should be stopped, but it doesn't sound as if maduro's ministers are the main profiteers here.