Hugo Armando “El Pollo” Carvajal, the former head of Military Intelligence and Counterintelligence of Venezuela during the governments of Presidents Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro, sent a letter to Spanish media in which he told details about the alleged shipment of suitcases full of dollars that departed from Caracas to other countries in America and Europe.
Carvajal, who is in the Spanish prison of Estremara after being arrested in September 2021 after spending almost two years on the run to avoid his extradition, affirmed that this “international financing” included leaders or parties related to the Bolivarian regime in Argentina, Bolivia , Brazil, Paraguay, Peru, Colombia, Honduras, Ecuador and Uruguay, in addition to Spain and Italy.
As published on Monday by the newspaper The nation, Through a letter addressed to journalists and received by the Spanish portal “OK Diario”, the retired military officer pointed out that it is curious that “now nobody knows anything” about the bags with dollars that helped illegally finance electoral candidacies and political parties, and also “to violent and extremist groups”.
Carvajal again mentioned the case known in Argentina as “Valijagate”, which occurred on August 4, 2007 when Venezuelan Guido Alejandro Antonini Wilson was found in the Metropolitan Airport with a suitcase containing $800,000 that had not been declared.
Antonini Wilson had arrived in the country on a private flight from Venezuela and accompanied by the Argentines Claudio Uberti, then head of the Occovi –and de facto “parallel” ambassador in Caracas–, his secretary Victoria Bereziuk, and the head of the state oil company Enarsa, Exequiel Espinosa.
In the new letter sent to the Spanish press, Carvajal explained that “twenty million dollars had already arrived by air to the Argentine left and the $200,000 that was missing on the last trip was taken by one of the passengers on that private flight to who I had the opportunity to interview.
former intelligence chief failed to identify who would have kept that missing money, and did not provide details on when he would have met that person.
The version provided by the ex-military contradicts what was found in the trial that took place in Miami, where it was determined that 5 million dollars arrived at Aeroparque that morning in August 2007 to finance Cristina Kirchner’s presidential campaign. .
uberti would have managed to spend 4.2 million dollars circumventing the controls, and only the 800,000 that came in the suitcase carried by Antonini Wilson were detected.
Also in the letter, Carvajal repeated something that he had already declared last October before the Spanish judge Manuel García-Castellón: that Chavismo gave Argentina a total of 21 million dollars in 21 deliveries. And that the flight that brought Antonini was the last of that illegal financing scheme.
“While I was director of Military Intelligence and Counterintelligence in Venezuela, I received a large number of reports indicating that this international financing was taking place,” he added.
“Concrete examples are: Néstor Kirchner in Argentina; Evo Morales in Bolivia; Lula da Silva in Brazil; Fernando Lugo in Paraguay; Ollanta Humala in Peru; Zelaya in Honduras: Gustavo Petro in Colombia, the Five Star Movement in Italy and Podemos in Spain. All of these were listed as recipients of money sent by the Venezuelan government,” he said in the letter.
In December, the Spanish National Court ratified its decision to declare “sufficient” the guarantee offered by the United States on the life sentence that could fall to Carvajal, claimed by that country for causes related to drug trafficking, so the extradition of “el Pollo” is getting closer.
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