After weeks of controversy surrounding Eladio Aponte Aponte’s testimony that high-ranking Venezuelan officials were complicit in the illegal narcotics trade, a second former Venezuelan Supreme Court judge, Luis Velásquez Alvaray, has stepped forward. On Wednesday, Velásquez Alvaray publicly accused Venezuelan government officials and members of the judiciary of corruption and of aiding drug traffickers and guerrilla organizations, via SoiTV, a Miami online channel.
Velásquez Alvaray, who currently resides in Costa Rica after having himself been charged with corruption, accused a group of judges and prosecutors that operate under the name “Band of Dwarves”, of extortion and bribery. He claims that the groups is led by former vice-president José Vicente Rangel, and known for penetrating the whole country with their influence. Velásquez Alvaray calls them a criminal gang, describing them as the “worst perversion from the judicial point of view that could exist.”
He also accused Rangel of being the mastermind behind the controversial murder of prosecutor Danilo Anderson, who died after a device under the driver’s seat of his car containing an explosive erupted. The bomb was apparently activated remotely by a cell phone.
Velásquez Alvaray showed the camera several incriminating documents; the worst was the actual record of Hugo Chávez ordering the arrest of his former presidential rival, Manuel Rosales. “The order was to arrest Manuel Rosales however possible, even though there was no proof against him,” he claimed. Politics has long been a contact sport, but to actually arrest one’s political opponent without cause is not an act that most democratically-elected leaders would countenance.
He went on to describe the two biggest drug trafficking groups operating in the country: “the Cartel of the Suns,” which he believes is composed primarily of generals, and the “Syrian-Lebanese Cartel,” which he argues is comprised of senior government officials. There apparently is proof of the involvement of many of these civil and military personalities in drug trafficking, extortions and homicides. It is this “war of cartels,” as Alvaray called it, that is tearing Venezuelan civil society apart. He claimed that the president of the Supreme Court, Luisa Estella Morales, is fully aware of the situation, but has done nothing to resolve or address the issue.
Links between many members of Chávez’s regime and the Colombia guerrilla organization FARC were also drawn; “I rely on information from the Colombian intelligence bodies on the current operation of the FARC in Venezuela,” and presented evidence of an alleged report which says that “the guerrillas are operating in Venezuela with more force than ever before.” Chávez’s brother, Adán, was one of the many accused.
These declarations emerge three weeks after another former Venezuelan Supreme Court judge, Eladio Aponte Aponte, accused Venezuelan officials of drug links and corruption, and turned over proof to the DEA. This is not the last we can expect to hear about this discouraging issue: according to a U.S. official, Aponte is preparing to speak publicly on these issues in the coming weeks.