Claudia Patricia Díaz Guillén, former national treasurer of Venezuela and known as “Hugo Chávez’s nurse”, was handed over to the United States by Spain on Thursday, media reported in the European nation.
Díaz Guillén has an appointment Friday before a judge in West Palm Beach, 100 kilometers north of Miami, according to court documents.
This is the only official information that would confirm her imminent arrival in the US, which claimed her from Spain to answer for the crimes of “bribery and money laundering”, of which her husband, Adrián José Velásquez Figueroa, is also accused.
Both were declared fugitives from US justice in April 2021, along with businessman Raúl Gorrín Belisario.
Authorized extradition of former treasurer
The Spanish National Court authorized in November of 2021 the extradition to the US of Diaz Guillén.
The couple, residing in Madrid (Spain), were charged in December 2020 for their alleged participation in a “money laundering and currency exchange plot” worth “billions of dollars,” reported the Department of Justice of USA
The accusation was presented by the District Attorney for the Southern District of Florida for the charge of “conspiracy to commit money laundering” and two others for “money laundering.”
The indictment alleges that Raúl Gorrín Belisario, 52, owner and president of the Venezuelan channel Globovisión, paid millions of dollars in bribes to two former Venezuelan national treasurers, Alejandro Andrade Cedeño and Claudia Díaz Guillén.
He also paid Velasquez, for her benefit, “to corruptly secure the rights to transact foreign currency for the Venezuelan government at favorable rates.”
