The former mayor of Caracas said he trusts the justice system to resolve everything. He showed his support for his daughter and grandchildren.
Luis Fernando Vuteff, son-in-law of Venezuelan opposition leader Antonio Ledezma, was arrested in Switzerland and faces an extradition request to the United States on charges of money laundering for his alleged participation in a corruption scheme that also involves Chavista businessmen Raúl Gorrín and Francisco Convit.
Vuteff is accused by US authorities of helping Venezuelan public officials and businessmen involved in Operation Money Flight hide illicit proceeds and facilitate access of those funds outside of Venezuela.
Sources with knowledge of the information said from Miami that Vuteff was arrested earlier this week in Switzerland, following illegally leaving Spain where he was facing legal proceedings and where he had to remain as a requirement of the parole benefit that had been granted to him.
Spanish authorities arrested him in 2018 as part of another money laundering investigation that led to the confiscation of 115 properties in the European country that had been used for that purpose.
The US authorities are currently processing Vuteff’s extradition to face the money laundering charges brought once morest him by the Miami federal prosecutor’s office.
Vuteff is one of nearly two dozen people investigated in connection with the gigantic corruption network in which businessmen close to the Maduro government conspired to embezzle up to $1.2 billion of public funds.
The US authorities assure that at least $600 million were obtained by making use of the exchange control regime in Venezuela, an instrument that allowed the value of the initial investment to increase astronomically, and that the defendants had plans to embezzle at least another $600 million more.
Among the people at the center of the scandal are Gorrín and Convit, as well as the Venezuelan businessman Alejandro Betancourt and Yosser Gavídia Flores, Walter Gavídia Flores and Yoswal Gavídia Flores, who received around $200 million of the funds extracted from the state-owned Petróleos de Venezuela.
Ledezma’s position
From Spain, Ledezma said in a written message to the Miami Herald that he deeply regrets the events, “much more so with my beloved daughter Antonietta and my two grandchildren involved, beings we love dearly, and with whom we will always be, unconditionally, supporting them in this Such an ungrateful circumstance.”
But the opposition leader emphasized that he maintains his position in the face of any irregular act, which throughout his life has been to demand sanctions and punishments for those who commit acts contrary to the law.
“Together with Mitzy (his wife), my daughter and the whole family, we hope that the truth will emerge and only the truth of this ongoing process,” Ledezma said in the message.
“In the face of this new episode, I maintain my firm determination, always unequivocal, consistent and transparent, to leave it in the hands of the magistrates in charge of that investigation, committed to respecting any ruling that is handed down, with the certainty that that fiscal and court instance of the United States of America, or in Spain itself”, he added.
Court documents accuse Vuteff of being one of the cogs in the scheme initially set up to process part of the $600 million that was extracted from PDVSA, along with his employer, Ralph Steinmann, a Swiss citizen who operated a European financial institution.
The case prepared once morest Vuteff and Steinmann was built on the basis of emails, documents, financial records, recordings of telephone and face-to-face conversations, as well as the testimony of confidential witnesses.
Among the documents obtained are emails sent by Vuteff with instructions to transfer part of the illicit funds to acquire a luxurious apartment in Miami in January 2017.
Prosecutors allege that Steinmann and Vuteff were aware that part of the funds they were handling were acquired through the corruption scheme following being informed in a 2016 meeting by another of the people involved in Money Flight, the former legal adviser from the Ministry of Energy and Mines Carmelo Urdaneta, that his money came from bribes he had received as a public official.
At the meeting, Steinmann, Vuteff and another of the defendants, the Portuguese citizen Andre Gois, proposed to Urdaneta a series of financial transactions and structures, including bonds in default, that might help him receive bribe payments.
have the informationInstantly on your cell phone. Join the Diario Primicia group on WhatsApp through the following link: https://chat.whatsapp.com/F8uA0zT8ho4ChOprPUU6lh
We are also on Telegram as @DiarioPrimicia, join here:https://t.me/diarioprimicia
