Swiss Authorities Found Over US$10 Billion in Suspicious Funds Linked to Maduro Regime

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The Swiss Prosecutor’s Office detected bank accounts with over US$10 billion that they suspect come from misappropriated public funds in Venezuela, reported the newspaper Le Matin Dimanche.

Since opening investigations in late 2019, public prosecutors in Zurich have become aware of funds held by people close to the Venezuelan government in hundreds of accounts at around 30 banks, according to the report.

The Zurich public prosecutors’ office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

In February 2020, a Swiss Federal Court ordered the release of bank documents linked to an embezzlement of US$4.5 billion from the PDVSA oil company. The decision involved brothers Luis Oberto and Ignacio Oberto and two other Venezuelan entrepreneurs suspected of being their accomplices: Alejandro Betancourt, who lives in Spain, and his cousin Francisco Convit, who lives in Venezuela. The others who are involved in the case are Swiss banker Charles Henry De Beaumont and two former front-line Chavista officials: Rafael Ramírez, the former PDVSA chief executive, and Nervis Villalobos, former deputy Minister of Energy.

The investigation suggests that the entrepreneurs bribed the oil company’s leaders to set up a convenient “business scheme” between 2012 and 2014. The majority of dividends were transferred to the Compagnie Bancaire Helvetique and EFG Bank AG banks, and the remainder was distributed among other financial institutions in Switzerland, always to accounts linked to the Oberto brothers.

“The operation, conducted through acts of corruption, allowed the embezzlement of over US$4.5 billion, laundered mainly through accounts opened in Switzerland,” said the highest Swiss court in rejecting the claims of the defendants’ attorneys, who intended to keep the operations secret.

Also in 2020, a report by the Swiss Radio Television Suisse said that the European country is one of the destinations of the Maduro regime to keep the profits from illegal gold mining and smuggling. In addition, it stated that different local banks -Compagnie Bancaire Helvétique and Credit Suisse- are suspected of laundering money from high-ranking officials of the dictatorship.

The report states that Switzerland also has indirect links to illegal gold. To support its claim, it referred to two events: the first occurred in May 2019, when British authorities intercepted a private plane that had departed from the Caribbean country and had stopped over in the Cayman Islands. Authorities assured that the cargo of 104 kilos of illegal gold, worth approximately US$5.1 million, had been bought by a Swiss citizen.

The second case occurred in February 2019. At that time, an official regime aircraft landed in Zurich with illegal gold, according to opposition denunciations. However, as it was protected by diplomatic status, the aircraft was not searched, and proceeded to Abu Dhabi.

The report stated in another passage that Switzerland is able to process the gold that would come in from Venezuela, considering that it has four of the six largest refineries in the world, which handle between 60% and 70% of the world’s gold.