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NY Times, Nov. 24, 2018
Jets, Horses and Bribes: How a Venezuelan Official Became a Billionaire
as His Country Crumbled
by Nicholas Casey
The opulent lifestyle of the Andrade family was as spectacular as the
economic collapse of the country they left behind.
Venezuelan immigrants, the family lived in a mansion in Florida
surrounded by show horses, as neighbors peeked over the property line in
awe. The family patriarch, Alejandro Andrade, had been a bodyguard of
President Hugo Chávez before rising to powerful positions in his government.
This month, Mr. Andrade will be known for something else: On Nov. 27, he
is expected to be sentenced for taking bribes as Venezuela’s treasurer,
in a money-laundering scheme that made him a billionaire.
Venezuela is facing its worst economic crisis in modern history.
Inflation and devastating shortages of food and medicine have forced
more than three million people to flee the country, according to the
United Nations.
But among those who have left Venezuela is a small clique that made
untold fortunes, including government officials, well-connected
businessmen and military leaders who siphoned off billions of dollars.
Many argue that this deep-rooted corruption laid the groundwork for the
collapse of Venezuela today.
The beneficiaries even have a name: The “boligarchs,” a term often used
for the new oligarchy that emerged under Mr. Chávez’s Socialist-inspired
“Bolivarian Revolution.”
“How could it be that a government employee had 60 horses?” said
Franklin Hoet-Linares, a Venezuelan lawyer who lives a short distance
from Mr. Andrade’s house in Wellington, Fla., near West Palm Beach.
Mr. Andrade’s plea agreement, and an indictment outlining the bribes he
received, were unsealed this week in Federal District Court in Florida.
They offer a window into how fortunes were amassed by Venezuela’s elite
before they decamped to South Florida.
With his powerful position in Venezuela, Mr. Andrade collected a
stunning array of bribes, the documents assert, including three private
jets, a yacht, horses and “numerous high-end watches.” In his guilty
plea, Mr. Andrade admitted to receiving more than $1 billion in bribes.
He is one of many Venezuelan officials accused of enriching themselves
from state coffers or illegal activities.
American officials imposed sanctions this year on Diosdado Cabello, one
of Venezuela’s most powerful politicians, accusing him of drug
trafficking, extortion and embezzling government money. Venezuela’s
interior and justice minister, Nestor Reverol, is under indictment in
the United States for receiving payments to help traffickers transport
cocaine.
And President Nicolás Maduro’s inner circle — including his wife, his
defense minister and others — “systematically plunders what remains of
Venezuela’s wealth,” American officials contend. Several of them are
also under sanctions.
The American government’s case against Mr. Andrade is, in fact, built
around another Venezuelan billionaire, Raúl Gorrín, who owns the news
network Globovisión and has been living in Miami.
Mr. Gorrín asked Mr. Andrade — identified as “Foreign Official 1” — to
help him secure the lucrative rights to conduct foreign currency
exchanges for the Venezuelan government, according to the federal documents.
When Mr. Andrade received a bill for $174,800 to transport his horses,
he simply sent it to Mr. Gorrín, who paid the invoice from his personal
bank account in Switzerland. In 2012, Mr. Gorrín sent a $20 million wire
transfer from a Swiss bank to purchase an aircraft for Mr. Andrade,
according to Mr. Andrade’s plea deal.
Separate charges against Mr. Gorrín, including nine counts of money
laundering, were unsealed this week. Mr. Andrade and other Venezuelans
fell under the jurisdiction of American prosecutors who say their money
laundering transactions passed through the United States financial system.
Mr. Andrade has forfeited his assets — including real estate, aircraft,
horses and bank accounts — and faces a maximum prison sentence of 10
years. Gabriel Jiménez, a Venezuelan in Chicago who owned a bank used to
pay the bribes, also pleaded guilty, American officials said.
In Venezuela Mr. Andrade was known by the nickname “the One-Eye,” after
a common story, that Mr. Chávez hit him in the eye by mistake during a
baseball game. The two originally became close when Mr. Andrade
participated in Mr. Chávez’s failed attempt to take power in a 1992 coup.
In 1998, when Mr. Chávez ran for president and won, Mr. Andrade served
as his bodyguard. A decade later, he had risen up the ranks to a much
more prominent role, as the head of the treasury.
Then in 2012, not long before Mr. Chávez died of cancer, Mr. Andrade
moved to Florida.
The Andrades were perhaps best known in the United States for their
horses, with a lavish collection of steeds and their colorful names,
like Bon Jovi and Hardrock Z.
“He had a lot of horses,” said Elizabeth Madden, an American
Olympic-medal winning equestrian. “You see that in this industry, people
buying horses and stuff like that. You don’t know where the money comes
from.”
The daily life of Mr. Andrade’s son, Emanuel, a show jumping competitor,
remains chronicled on Instagram, where pictures can be seen of a jet-set
lifestyle with competitions in London and Madrid.
In one photo, Emanuel Andrade is riding a horse in Paris with the Eiffel
Tower in the background. Another picture that circulated on Latin
American news sites shows Emanuel Andrade posing next to Kendall Jenner,
the American model.
The elder Mr. Andrade became known in Florida social circles, too,
according to McLain Ward, an Olympic equestrian medalist who said Mr.
Andrade sponsored young rider events, often ones in which his son was
competing.
But beyond that, the details on the family were vague, he said.
“We knew that he was a Venezuelan living here, but about his family, not
so well,” said Mr. Ward, who said he sold two horses to the Andrades a
couple of years ago. “We knew they were involved in the government in
some way.”
Mr. Hoet-Linares, the Venezuelan lawyer who lives close to the Andrade
mansion, said he remains angry at the profiteering of well-connected
Venezuelans while many people in the country do not have enough to eat.
Two years ago, he said, he accosted Mr. Andrade at a party about the
sums he had taken and the possibility of using money to reconstruct
Venezuela.
“I said, ‘Look, let’s find a way to help the country,’” Mr. Hoet-Linares
recalled. “I think he was a little surprised. He said, ‘I’m off to a
trip, we can talk when I’m back.’”
Mr. Hoet-Linares says he did not hear back. But while the seizure of Mr.
Andrade’s assets is a step in the right direction, he said, it’s far
from enough.
“The most perverse thing about Venezuelan corruption is that the money
that they take internationally and in the U.S. does not go to the
treasury of Venezuela,” he said.
The equestrian community this week was also at a loss for what to make
of the amount of money that the Andrades had amassed.
“If he’s as strong of a rider as I think he is, he’ll bounce back,”
Allie Rose Crowell, an equestrian competitor, wrote on Facebook about
Emanuel Andrade in reaction to the news.
“But I’m not forgiving people who steal a billion dollars from one of
the poorest nations on the planet, and using it for their own self
interest.”
Sarah Maslin Nir contributed reporting from New York.
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