Pedro Tellechea, Venezuela’s former oil minister, had resigned simply days earlier than prosecutors introduced his arrest.
A former Venezuelan oil minister with alleged ties to a United States intelligence-run agency has been arrested, days after he resigned.
Pedro Tellechea, Venezuela’s onetime petroleum minister and a former state oil govt, was taken into custody on Sunday, the AFP information company reported. Particulars of his arrest had been introduced on Monday.
Tellechea and his co-conspirators are accused of facilitating the unlawful “supply of an automatic management system” to an organization managed by the US intelligence providers” by means of Petroleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA), the state-controlled oil firm he operated, Lawyer Common Tarek William Saab mentioned in a press release.
Saab acknowledged that Telelchea had violated “nationwide sovereignty” by handing “the mind of PDVSA” over to the unnamed agency. Tellechea’s “closest collaborators” had been additionally seized by authorities. They weren’t named by prosecutors.
The arrest of Tellechea, a former military colonel who served as oil minister for a couple of months, comes contemporary on the heels of his abrupt resignation final week. On Friday, in a submit on social media, he relinquished his submit, citing “well being issues that require my quick consideration”.
He had been appointed petroleum minister in March 2023, however was later moved from the oil ministry to the trade ministry as a part of President Nicolas Maduro’s sprawling cupboard re-shuffling in August after the embattled president’s contested election victory. Tellechea was appointed head of PDVSA in January 2023, the Reuters information company reported.
Greater than 2,400 folks had been arrested and a minimum of 27 folks had been killed in Venezuela after protests engulfed the nation accusing Maduro of voter fraud.
Tellechea’s arrest is the most recent scandal to rock the nation’s troubled vitality sector, which has been reeling in current months and years from a flurry of felony prosecutions of high oil managers and senior officers.
Venezuela’s petroleum minister, Tareck El Aissami, resigned final 12 months after authorities detained six high-level officers linked to a corruption probe into PDVSA. El Aissami was additionally subsequently detained.
The crackdown finally led to the arrest of a minimum of 21 businesspeople and senior officers associated to the vanishing of proceeds of oil shipments, totalling greater than $20bn, The Related Press information company reported.
In 2023, Saab mentioned his workplace introduced it had probed 27 “corruption schemes” in PDVSA since 2017, which he famous had resulted in additional than 200 arrests, together with the detention of a number of the nation’s high oil executives.
Eulogio del Pino and Nelson Martinez, two different former petroleum ministers, additionally beforehand confronted corruption costs in Venezuela. Martinez later died in jail. Rafael Ramirez, one other ex-oil minister who held the submit from 2002 to 2014, can be needed by Venezuelan authorities and is presently at giant, hiding out in Italy. Italy has not granted Venezuela’s extradition request.
Venezuela, which boasts the world’s largest recognized oil reserves, as soon as produced in extra of three million barrels of oil per day. Output has since plummeted to lower than a million barrels amid political tensions, sanctions, and extreme mismanagement.
The US has given oil giants like Chevron and Repsol the inexperienced mild to maintain a foothold within the nation by making use of for impartial licences.
