An investigations has found that Venezuelan state gold was laundered by blending its proceeds with COVID-19 bailout funds to Spanish long haul carrier Plus Ultra Airlines. And Venezuela’s government may have helped the airline qualify for the pandemic bailout from Spain in the first place.
Plus Ultra received substantial bailout money that they may not have qualified for, triggering a separate investigation. However the funds were integrated into a broader financial network designed to conceal the origins of illicit money. By merging the bailout cash with revenue from Venezuelan state gold sales, they successfully “washed” the money, rendering it virtually indistinguishable from lawful financial flows.
For the past decade the air carrier has primarily connected Spain with Latin America using Airbus widebodies.
Credit: PlusUltra
After receiving a 53 million euro (US$55.6 million) pandemic bailout, a labyrinth of shell companies and offshore financial intermediaries were reportedly employed to obscure the money trail.
Plus Ultra made transfers to accounts abroad that are linked to a money laundering network with connections in Venezuela, France, and Switzerland. It has been identified that this criminal network has been involved in laundering large sums of money that, according to the investigation, come from misappropriated Venezuelan public funds. Initial inquiries suggest that these funds may be related to irregularities in the sale of gold from the Banco de Venezuela and in the state food distribution program through the Local Committees for Supply and Production (CLAP), pointing to a pattern of corruption and misappropriation of state resources. …One of the contracts involved the sale of gold valued at 30 million euros to a company in the United Arab Emirates, while another entity reportedly received transfers to a bank account in Panama.
The sale of luxury watches was also used as part of the money laundering. However, the airline got an anti-corruption prosecution dismissed by arguing the Spanish court lacked jurisdiction of criminal activity in Venezuela. Prosecutors claim the Venezuelan government provided an loan through a cutout that allowed the airline to qualify for pandemic bailout funds in the first place. At stake at this point is the airline’s continued solvency.
In their defense, maybe they were just extending PlusUltra Club Premier Gold benefits to officials from Venezuela?
(HT: Enilria)
Was this “at the direction of Hugo Chavez” as ‘disgraced’ lawyer Sidney Powell suggested after the 2020 election? Bah! Fun times. Seriously, though, the Venezuelan people are still not doing well. Even though the country has all that oil, still… hyperinflation. It’s bad ‘management’ obviously as with most dictatorships. Would’ve been nice to be able to visit Angel Falls someday. Oh well.
Yeah, they go harder after all the football players and singers when they’re not paying the correct tax!! If I was neymar or shakira, I would make flyers and have them passed out in the cities lol just to show their incompetence lol
This is further proof of the amount of fraud that took place during the mass hysteria event.
@Mike P — Fraud? In Venezuela? Ok. Yeah. Seems like it.
But I suspect you’re just blaming your perceived enemies, once again, like you often do on here.
So, in the USA, who did the most ‘fraud, waste, and abuse’ during pandemic?
Answer: Likely, the PPP loans. That was small, medium, and large businesses getting millions of dollars, and those owners did not only use it to keep their employees on payroll—they bought second homes and jet skis.
That’s the thing though—you only punch down. Why not hold ‘white collar criminals’ accountable, too?