Venezuela military trafficking food

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HANNAH DREIER AND JOSHUA GOODMAN PUERTO CABELLO, VENEZ UE L A • When hunger drew tens of thousands of Venezuelans to the streets last summer in protest, President Nicolas Maduro turned to the military to manage the country’s diminished food supply, putting generals in charge of everything from butter to rice.

But instead of fighting hunger, the military is making money from it, an Associated Press investigation shows. That’s what grocer Jose Campos found when he ran out of pantry staples this year. In the middle of the night, he would travel to an illegal market run by the military to buy corn flour — at 100 times the government-set price.

“The military would be watching over whole bags of money,” Campos said. “They always had what I needed.”

With much of the country on the verge of starvation and malnourished children dying in pediatric wards, food trafficking has become big business. And the military is at the heart of the graft, according to documents and interviews with more than 60 officials, company owners and workers, including five former generals.

As a result, food is not reaching those who most need it.

The U.S. has taken notice. Prosecutors have opened investigations against senior Venezuelan officials for laundering riches from food contracts through the U.S. financial system, according to several people with direct knowledge of the probes. No charges have been brought.

“Lately, food is a better business than drugs,” said retired Gen. Cliver Alcala.

The late president Hugo Chavez created a Food Ministry in 2004. His socialist government nationalized and then neglected farms and factories, and domestic production dried up. When the price of oil collapsed in 2014, the government no longer could afford to import all the food needed.

Hungry Venezuelans began rioting, and so Maduro handed the generals complete power over food. The government now imports nearly all the country’s food, and corruption drives prices sky-high.

In large part due to concerns of graft, the three largest global food traders, all based in the U.S., have stopped selling directly to the Venezuelan government.

One South American businessman says he has paid millions in kickbacks to Venezuelan officials, including US$8 million to people who work for the food minister Gen. Rodolfo Marco Torres. Marco Torres did not respond to requests for comment.

Some contracts go to firms that have no experience in food or seem to exist only on paper. Two supposed food suppliers transferred more than US$5.5 million in 2012 and 2013 to a Geneva account controlled by the brothers-inlaw of the then-food minister, Gen. Carlos Osorio, according to bank and internal company documents seen by AP.

Osorio did not respond to requests for comment.