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Venezuela ex-ministers seek probe into $300 billion in lost oil revenue
Source: Reuters
World | Tue Feb 2, 2016 1:31pm EST
Venezuela ex-ministers seek probe into $300 billion in lost oil revenue
CARACAS | BY EYANIR CHINEA AND CORINA PONS
Two former cabinet ministers under late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez are seeking an investigation to trace the fate of some $300 billion allegedly embezzled during the past decade through a complex currency control system.
Hector Navarro, who ran five ministries under Chavez's rule, will ask a state ethics council to review the operations of the 13-year-old exchange control mechanism that opposition leaders have described as a "corruption machine."
Navarro and Jorge Giordani, a former finance minister who was Chavez's closest economic adviser during his 14-year rule, have made calculations showing the government cannot account for how it spent nearly a third of the $1 trillion that entered its coffers in the past decade.
"A gang was created that was only interested in getting their hands on financial resources, on (the country's) oil revenue," Navarro, who helped found the ruling Socialist Party but was expelled in 2014, said in an interview with Reuters.
[font size=1]-snip-[/font]
Venezuela ex-ministers seek probe into $300 billion in lost oil revenue
CARACAS | BY EYANIR CHINEA AND CORINA PONS
Two former cabinet ministers under late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez are seeking an investigation to trace the fate of some $300 billion allegedly embezzled during the past decade through a complex currency control system.
Hector Navarro, who ran five ministries under Chavez's rule, will ask a state ethics council to review the operations of the 13-year-old exchange control mechanism that opposition leaders have described as a "corruption machine."
Navarro and Jorge Giordani, a former finance minister who was Chavez's closest economic adviser during his 14-year rule, have made calculations showing the government cannot account for how it spent nearly a third of the $1 trillion that entered its coffers in the past decade.
"A gang was created that was only interested in getting their hands on financial resources, on (the country's) oil revenue," Navarro, who helped found the ruling Socialist Party but was expelled in 2014, said in an interview with Reuters.
[font size=1]-snip-[/font]
Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-politics-idUSKCN0VB26F
