June 27, 2019, Strategic Culture Foundation https://www.strategic-culture.org
(Russia) https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/06/27/cia-finances-another-group-of-fraudsters-venezuelan-opposition/
Wayne Madsen*
Once again, the Central Intelligence
Agency has been caught financing a group of grifters and fraudsters at the
expense of the American taxpayers. In the latest case, just another in the
agency’s 72-year history, the Trump administration-appointed ad hoc board of
CITGO, the US subsidiary of the state-owned Venezuelan oil company, PDVSA,
stands accused of steering $70 million of escrowed funds, earmarked for PDVSA’s
fiscal year 2020 bond, to the pockets of CIA-supported officials of the
Venezuelan opposition “Popular Will” party headed by the so-called “interim
president” of Venezuela, Juan Guaidó.
In addition to Guaidó, who is
accused by the legitimate Venezuelan government of money laundering, treason,
and corruption, other Popular Will leaders under investigation by both the
Venezuelan Attorney General and the US Justice Department include Carlos
Vecchio, Guaidó’s envoy in Washington; Rossana Barrera and Kevin Rojas,
Guaidó’s emissaries in Cucuta, a Colombian-Venezuelan border town; Sergio
Vargara, Barrera’s brother-in-law and a Member of the Venezuelan Congress;
Guaidó’s “ambassador” to Colombia, Humberto Calderon Berti, opposition
businessman Miguel Sabal; and Guaidó’s chief of staff, Roberto Marrero. Over
two dozen other Popular Will leaders are also under investigation for fraud
involving money earmarked by the Trump administration, particularly Iran-Contra
scandal felon and current Trump special envoy for regime change in Venezuela,
Elliot Abrams.
Barrera and Rojas are accused of
spending money given to the Popular Will by the US Agency for International
Development (USAID), a longtime CIA financial pass-through,
