Reuters photo
By
Ricardo Swire
Venezuelan government officials such as the Vice President, Defence Minister and Communication & Information Minister, have found their names added to a special United States Treasury Department list. Venezuela’s First Lady Cilia Flores is also a feature on the high profile US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) document. On September 25, 2018 the Venezuelan president’s wife, a former Solicitor–General, was implicated in corruption and money laundering crimes. Assets the OFAC froze included a private jet and three companies.
The First Lady’s three children from a previous marriage were also subjects of a US Attorney General Office probe. The trio are implicated as recipients of US$200 million from the PDVSA US$1.2 billion “Operation Money Flight” national white collar crime caper. A joint US Treasury Department/Panama government sanction applied to one of Venezuela First Lady nephews, a former Petroleos de Venezuela S.A (PDVSA) treasurer. Two other nephews are each serving an eighteen year jail sentence in America for drug trafficking.
Over a twelve year period the two Venezuelan elites smuggled South American cocaine and were linked to a shadowy Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) syndicate. For decades US/Venezuela political muscle flexing has festered. Today the Venezuelan president is regarded the main “anti-US Leader” in the region. Diplomatic manoeuvres such as OFAC are supported by clandestine special services’ regime disintegration efforts. There have been nineteen subversive attempts in six weeks to shutdown Venezuela’s national electrical grid, part of America’s true-and-tried methods.
Venezuela’s military leadership closely monitored the USS George Washington aircraft carrier strike group when the armada sailed from San Diego, California to the Panama Canal. The US Southern Command is a Unified Combatant Command (UCC), responsible for providing contingency planning and operations in the Caribbean, Central and South America. In 2015 the UCC intensified activities in Venezuela. The Defence Intelligence Agency station, housed inside the US Embassy in Caracas, was assigned a new boss experienced in special operations coordination. Electronic/Technical experts deployed to “low profile” US embassy positions.
On one occasion Venezuela’s Counter-Intelligence Unit exposed a section of Colombian agents working for US Military Intelligence. The Colombians had videotaped and photographed the infrastructure of Venezuela’s electric grid, plus major cities and businesses. In a border security breach a US registered Dash-8 bombardier plane and a C-17 Globemaster military transport aircraft departed Dutch Caribbean island Curacao and entered Venezuelan airspace. An ARC-135 Combat Sent intelligence plane flew from the US Air Force base in Nebraska and skimmed Venezuelan airspace. Such aircraft is equipped with electronic systems that collect intelligence, intercept radio communications and monitor targets on the ground, sea or air.
Ricardo Swire
Ricardo Swire is the Principal Consultant at R-L-H Security Consultants & Business Support Services and writes on a number of important issues.
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