By Jose Luis Grandos Ceja on October 22, 2024
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro stands beside former Oil Minister Pedro Tellechea during a campaign event in July.
Venezuelan authorities arrested former Oil Minister Pedro Tellechea on Sunday over accusations of corruption and alleged ties to United States (US) intelligence.
Rumors of Tellechea’s detention that circulated over the weekend were confirmed by Attorney General Tarek William Saab in a statement Monday. Saab said the former oil minister was arrested, along with his “closest collaborators” over “serious crimes that threaten the highest interests of the nation.”
Tellechea is accused of handing over the automatized control system of state oil company PDVSA to “a firm controlled by US intelligence services,” according to the statement. Press reports added that his capture was preceded by a string of arrests of PDVSA personnel in recent weeks.
The former minister was ousted from his post as industry minister by President Nicolás Maduro on Friday, with Tellechea claiming at the time that he resigned due to health issues. He was replaced by Alex Saab, the former government envoy who returned to Venezuela following a prisoner swap with the US. Tellechea had earlier in the year been removed as oil minister as part of a cabinet shuffle, having been replaced by Vice-President Delcy Rodríguez.
“Bureaucracy, corruption and treason are other threats that haunt the people. We are in a tireless battle against corruption and treason, let no one get tired,” said Maduro on Monday without naming Tellechea directly. “And I will not rest in the fight against bureaucracy, the corrupt and the traitors, no matter who falls.”
Tellechea himself was tapped by Maduro for the role of oil minister following a high-level corruption probe that revealed multi-billion-dollar losses from untracked crude sales and led to the resignation of then Oil Minister Tareck El Aissami. After months of speculation and the jailing of his close associates, El Aissami was also arrested and charged with misappropriation of public funds, influence trafficking, money laundering, and treason.
El Aissami is accused of working in collaboration with people in the United States to further damage the Venezuelan economy. Authorities have not provided updates on his trial.
While Tellechea has not yet been formally charged, he faces equally serious allegations given the importance of Venezuela’s oil industry. Saab accused him of violating the “national sovereignty” of Venezuela by handing over PDVSA’s automatized control system, referred to as the firm’s “brain,”, to an unnamed firm with reported ties to US intelligence.
Tellechea joins a long list of former oil ministers accused of misconduct. Venezuelan authorities have likewise sought the arrest and extradition of longtime Oil Minister Rafael Ramírez, who served from 2002 to 2014, over alleged corruption in the state-owned oil company. Italian courts have denied the extradition request.
Eulogio del Pino and Nelson Martínez, who alternated on the post between 2015 and 2017, were likewise jailed on corruption charges. The latter passed away in 2018 while in custody.
Tellechea presided over the state-owned oil company and introduced stricter sales mechanisms to avoid crude cargoes departing without payment. He also pursued jointly-run oil ventures with foreign oil producers as part of an effort to ramp up production.
Venezuela’s oil industry has been severely impacted by US unilateral coercive measures, also known as sanctions, aimed at punishing the state’s ability to extract and commercialize oil in international markets as part of a broader effort to oust Maduro from power.
Under severe US sanctions, the Caribbean nation turned to unreliable intermediaries to place its crude in Asian markets by selling at big discounts. The unorthodox system led to numerous payment delays and made the country more vulnerable to corruption schemes led by officials.
Tellechea previously served as the head of Venezuela’s state petrochemical Pequiven, the parent company of agrochemical company Monómeros. Considered Venezuela’s second most important foreign asset, Monómeros came under the control of Venezuela’s hardline opposition in May 2019 and suffered under its management before eventually being returned to Venezuela following the inauguration of Gustavo Petro as president in Colombia.
Edited by Ricardo Vaz in Caracas.
Source: Venezuelan Analysis