Venezuela Allegedly Funds Leftist Political Party in Spain

A court case in Spain is surfacing startling allegations that financial backing for its ruling party, Podemos, has been coming from Venezuela, both under Hugo Chavez, who helped found the party, and President Maduro, now the party’s principal financial backer in a campaign for a “political change” in Spain. The case had been closed in 2016 but was reopened last year under a judge in Madrid, Manuel García-Castellón. A Chavez-era Venezuelan military intelligence chief who was the star witness in the case, Hugo Carvajal, also known as Pollo, is currently cooperating with Spain’s investigations into Chavez-era political financing, which would allegedly be illegal under Spanish law, according to a 2015 change in the criminal code. Mr. Carvajal testified that Chavez transferred funds to Spain’s Podemos from Venezuela’s government-owned oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela, according to the Spanish newspaper El Pais. After the 2020 election, the Spanish party coalesced with another leftist faction to form a new government. According to documents presented by Mr. Carvajal in court, a document from 2008 carried Chavez’s signature on a $6.7 million payment to Spain’s socialist group Center for Political and Social Studies Foundation, an ally of Podemos. In a separate document, from 2013, Mr. Maduro ordered a transaction involving $143,000 going to Podemos political leaders Carolina Bescansa, Jorge Lago, and Ariel Jerez. Mr. Carvajal also testified that one of Podemos’s founders, Juan Carlos Monedero, received 200,000 euros from Mr. Maduro.Mr. Carvajal, who is now under house arrest at Madrid, left Venezuela in 2019 soon after Mr. Maduro accused him of treason, according to Spanish newspapers.“It’s treason when commitments are broken. My commitment has always been to the Venezuelan people,” Mr. Carvajal countered on Twitter.Arrested in Spain, Mr. Carvajal was let go on a five-month probation. Soon after, however, he was then forced into hiding once Madrid agreed to extradite him to America, where he was wanted on allegations of drug trafficking and organized crime activities during his time as Venezuela’s military intelligence chief, according to America’s state department.In 2021, the state department offered a $10 million award for information leading to Mr. Carvajal’s arrest. He was re-captured in Spain in September 2021, but Mr. García-Castellón, a right wing judge, agreed to drop the American extradition in exchange for Mr. Carvajal’s testimony regarding “sensitive” information on illegal financial transactions involving Podemos, according to Spanish newspapers. Mr. Carvajal testified that Chavez and Mr. Maduro financed several leftist political personalities, parties, and movements around the world for at least 15 years. The beneficiaries included Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Argentina’s Nestor Kirchner, Bolivia’s Evo Morales, and Colombia’s Gustavo Petro. The case opened for the first time in 2016, after a Spanish right wing party, the Unión Cívica Española-Partido por la Paz, Reconciliación y Progreso, alleged that Podemos’s director, Pablo Iglesias, violated financial transactions and money laundering laws. Judge Alejandro Abascal dismissed the case, alleging it was based on a phony police report aimed at discrediting political rivals. In 2021, as news spread that the case was about to be reopened, a founder of Podemos, Juan Carlos Monedero, dismissed the allegations, saying it was “ridiculous” to reopen a case after it had been dismissed five years earlier. “A certain Pollo claims to have proof that Venezuela, in 2014, funded Podemos, which was founded in 2015,” Mr. Monedero tweeted. “Complaints from the extreme right were already filed in 2016, 2017, and 2019 by the Supreme Court. Stay calm.” This week, Judge García-Castellón dismissed the case yet again, basing his ruling on a 2015 change in Spain’s criminal code. The case, he said, should now be reopened by the Government Accountability Office. “Any crime that occurred after the criminalization of illegal financing of political parties should be investigated in new proceedings,” he said.

Venezuela Allegedly Funds Leftist Political Party in Spain

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