Venezuela’s energy minister said Sunday the country’s state-run oil company no longer has ties to a Connecticut hedge fund manager who has pleaded guilty to fraud in a scheme that could cost investors hundreds of millions of dollars....MOREA quick search for the keywords oil, venezuela, corruption will turn up headlines ranging from:
Corruption, Mismanagement, and Abuse of Power in Hugo Chávez's Venezuela
-Cato Institute
To Thursday's comment on the instant scandal: "Venezuela's State Oil Company Under the Spotlight Yet Again":
...In return, Venezuela is using oil revenues to repay the debts. Barrels of oil are crossing the Pacific for as little as $5 a pop, according to WikiLeaks cables...See also the Wikipedia entry: "Corruption in Venezuela":
...Venezuelans are used to their oil company’s apparently fraudulent activities. Just last year, more than 2,000 containers of rotting food -- 75,000 tonnes -- were discovered in the hands of a PDVSA subsidiary. The scandal came at a time when state-run grocery stores were short of basic foodstuffs.
Meanwhile, the ‘suitcase scandal’ in 2007 saw a PDVSA-connected businessman caught carrying $800,000 into Argentina, apparently as a donation to Cristina Fernández de Kirchner during her presidential campaign....
Corruption in Venezuela, as in most countries of Latin America, is high by world standards. In the case of Venezuela, the discovery of oil in the early twentieth century had worsened political corruption,[1] and by the late 1970s, the description of oil as "the Devil's excrement" had become a common expression.[2]...Just don't try to tie them to some Stamford-based Hedge Fund
I don't care who ya are, that's funny.
-Larry C. Guy
