A Venezuelan entity supervising the use of crypto currency for official transactions was assigned oil cargoes for sale with no administrative control, Saab said. Many of the buyers did not pay for the oil correspondingly, he added.
PDVSA has
accumulated $21.2 billion
in commercial accounts receivable since 2020 including $3.6
billion potentially unrecoverable, documents viewed by Reuters
showed this week, after turning to dozens of little known
intermediaries to export its oil under U.S. sanctions.
The 21 people arrested face accusations of appropriation
of public assets, money laundering, influence peddling and
criminal association. Officials involved could also face charges
of treason, the attorney general said.
Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro, who said he has
been directly overseeing the probe, this week appointed PDVSA's
head Pedro Tellechea as new oil minister, delegating in him the
supervision of the whole industry.
In the last five years, Saab's office has investigated 31 cases linked to corruption in Venezuela's oil industry, which provides most of the OPEC country's hard-currency revenue, leading to almost 200 people prosecuted.
(Reporting by Deisy Buitrago and Marianna Parraga
Editing by Marguerita Choy)
