How much money did Chavista steal? The investigation that revealed looting in Venezuela

A few days after the decision of the Venezuelan Supreme Court, which confirmed on January 26 the denial of opposition leader Maria Corina Machado from running for the presidency against the re-election of Nicolas Maduro, a journalistic investigation conducted by the digital portal Armando.info criticizing the regime revealed the scope of the looting that took place on For decades under the governments of Hugo Chavez and Maduro.

by: the time

At a time when the regime is tightening repression not only against Machado and opponents, but also against the teachers' union and against officers and non-commissioned officers whom it, without any evidence, links to an alleged destabilization plan, Armando.info ranks at $56,000 million the amount of part of the money that has disappeared .

The money circulated through a series of freely allocated funds that Chavez had set up since the end of the last century to manage, without any financial oversight, the resources of the oil boom that had produced an income for the country of more than $700 million, a huge sum. This has not improved the lives of ordinary Venezuelans.

The exact figure is $56,036,854,000, calculated based on official reports on the management of dozens of private funds. These are documents from the Ministry of Planning and Finance, the National Treasury and the Bank for Economic and Social Development (BANDS), among others.

The documents were shared by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), an international network of investigative journalists who pursue and expose links between criminal organizations, corrupt practices, politicians and government officials in dozens of countries around the world.

The primary mission was carried out by Venezuelan investigative journalists Valentina Lares – who was this newspaper's correspondent in Caracas – and Marcos David Valverde.

You can read the full memo at the time