Venezuela arrests former oil heads
•A purge in Venezuela’s economically crucial energy establishment reached the top tiers of power as the former heads of the oil ministry and staterun producer PDVSA were accused of corruption and imprisoned.
Nelson Martinez and Eulogio del Pino, who alternated running the agencies, joined 63 other oil- industry managers and officials who have been arrested in recent months, public prosecutor Tarek William Saab said in a Caracas news conference Thursday.
“This sends a clear signal as to which direction the criminal justice system is taking,” Saab said. “We’re talking about the dismantling of the cartel that was installed in PDVSA.”
The moves consolidate President Nicolas Maduro’s grip on the oil producer, which is the socialist regime’s economic mainstay despite flagging production and quality. Maduro named Maj- Gen. Manuel Quevedo as the replacement for Martinez and Del Pino on Sunday before the detentions Thursday morning.
The military officer, who has no experience in the industry, is representing the nation at an OPEC meeting in Vienna.
In a nation where corruption has been endemic for decades, the veracity of the accusations is difficult to judge. But the arrests further a power struggle within the ruling party as Maduro prepares to run for re- election in 2018. Del Pino, a Stanford graduate, was among the most powerful oil officials over the past two decades along with Rafael Ramirez, the United Nations ambassador, who is also said to be a target of government investigations.
The government countenanced corruption all along, said Nelson Hernandez, an oil consultant for Coener.
“What’s changed is that the oil money is gone, and now someone has to be blamed,” he said. “It’s a Soviet- style purge to let another crew come in. The revolution eating its own children.”
Maduro has taken sole ownership of politics by installing a supreme body of loyalists that bypasses the National Assembly — and named Saab as prosecutor. The president’s clampdown both cements his power and allows him to paint himself as battling the forces of Yankee imperialism as the heir of the late president Hugo Chavez.
Eurasia Group, a New York political risk consultancy, expects him to announce presidential elections in the first quarter of 2018 and to win them due to divisions within the opposition and control of the levers of the state institutions. But Maduro has seized control of a deeply troubled nation, subject to i nternational sanctions and riven by conflict and hunger as its oil profits remain insufficient.