Maduro Finds His Inner Stalin

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We welcome you to the Greater Caribbean Monitor (GCaM). In this issue, you will find:

•Maduro Finds His Inner Stalin

•Glas Shatters Mexico-Ecuador Relations

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The GCaM Team

•Maduro Finds His Inner Stalin
663 words | 3 minutes reading time

Venezuelan authorities have arrested Tareck El Aissami, former Minister of Petroleum and president of PDVSA, the state oil company. President Nicolás Maduro accuses him of high treason. In truth, the former minister is implicated in a corruption scandal of enormous proportions, even by the standards of the Venezuelan regime.

• El Aissami has been charged with money laundering, misappropriation of public funds, peddling of political favors, and unlawful association. The Prosecutor’s Office, in characteristic fashion, promised an “exemplary sanction.”

• Simón Zerpa, a former finance minister, and Samark López, a businessman and front man for El Aissami, were also detained. Both are lifelong regime supporters who are currently under U.S. sanctions.

• They are all accused of partaking in the PDVSA-Crypto plot. According to prosecutors, El Aissami led an extensive gang of corrupt politicians and businessmen who sold Venezuelan crude oil in exchange for cryptocurrencies.

Between the Lines. The spectacle of El Aissami’s capture may strike one as confusing and uncouth, but certainly not surprising. Until this week, El Aissami had been missing for a year; at one point, he was a member of the regime’s politburo, but since March 2023, he appeared to be subject to a kind of damnatio memoriae.

• The novelty, therefore, is not the political exclusion of the former minister, but the confirmation of his arrest. He is not the first to fall during this purge: the PDVSA-Crypto case has led to the arrest of 54 individuals, many of them prominent political figures, some hailing from El Aissami’s circle.

• There is talk of the theft of up to $21.2 billion from public coffers. Venezuela, it should be remembered, is hardly experiencing times of plenty, but the plot began in 2017, when the situation was truly dire, the existence of the State was in danger, and millions of Venezuelans were emigrating.

• This is not an ideological dispute. The detainees are members of the “bolibourgeoisie”, the regime’s Bolivarian elite. In the eyes of Maduro and his entourage, these are just rewards, for the sheer size of the stolen sums endangered the regime’s survival.

Profile. El Aissami, who was once deemed the “oil czar,” has been a Chavista for more than 20 years. His loyalty was first rewarded in 2005, when he was elected a backbencher. He ended his career as a “super minister”—sectoral vice president for economic affairs and oil minister.

• He held the executive vice presidency—infamous Delcy Rodríguez’s current position—between 2017 and 2018. He was foreign minister for four years and industries minister for another three. He was even granted a personal fiefdom, Aragua State, of which he was governor between 2012 and 2017.

• The scion of a Syrian-Lebanese, he is Druze by religion and ethnicity. His father led the Venezuelan section of the Iraqi Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party, Saddam Hussein’s political party.

• He always claimed to be incorruptible: as an “anti-imperialist revolutionary,” he described his morals as “intact.” Chávez and Maduro backed him at the time, considering him a good patriot and a good socialist. The fact that he was an Arab, and what’s more, a Ba’athist imbued him with revolutionary cachet.

Why Does It Matter? The internecine scuffles of the Venezuelan regime might seem inconsequential. They are, at least to some extent. The government maintains its hold on power and even managed to convince the White House to lift a number of sanctions despite the Republicans’ opposition.

• The opposition is not in good shape. After the pantomime of Juan Guaidó’s interim government, María Corina Machado emerged as leader. Maduro, ignoring what he promised U.S. diplomats in Barbados, had her barred from running.

• As if that were not enough, Manuel Rosales, governor of Zulia State, has pledged loyalty to Machado, but only to Machado, and not to any other candidate. Given the impossibility of a Machado candidacy, there exists the possibility of a divided opposition ahead of July’s presidential elections.

• In any case, El Aissami’s arrest is a show of force by Maduro. Now that the most cumbersome economic difficulties have been overcome, this purge is part of his strategy to secure another six years in power.

•Glas Shatters Mexico-Ecuador Relations
655 words | 3 minutes reading time

Ecuador and Mexico are embroiled in a diplomatic crisis. Former vice president Jorge Glas, left-winger Rafael Correa’s right-hand man and a “guest” of the Mexican embassy in Quito, is the bone of contention. Glas, who has been convicted on several counts of corruption and embezzlement, says he is the victim of lawfare and legal persecution.

• Last week, Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) suggested in a press conference that if it had not been for the assassination of presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio, pro-Correa candidate Luisa González would now be president of Ecuador.

• This outraged the Ecuadorian government, which accused Mexico of undue interference. The Mexican ambassador, Raquel Serur, was declared persona non grata and expelled the next day. In response, Mexico accepted Glas’ asylum application and demanded Ecuador offer him safe passage.

• President Daniel Noboa declined the request. Instead, he ordered police to storm the embassy and detain Glas, violating the principle of extraterritoriality. Mexico—and Nicaragua, incidentally—reacted by severing relations with Ecuador. Mexico has referred the matter to international courts and has called for Ecuador’s exclusion from the UN.

Between the Lines. Since 2017, Glas has been in a kind of legal seesaw, entering and leaving prison as the courts dictate. In December 2023, when a new arrest warrant was issued in his name, he took refuge in the Mexican embassy, requesting political asylum a few days later.

• Glas was found guilty of having received multimillion-dollar bribes from Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht and other state contractors, hence his being sentenced first to six and then eight years in prison.

• The conviction is eminently justified. There is an undoubted degree of politicization, as is to be expected with a politician—and childhood friend—so closely linked to Rafael Correa, currently in self-imposed exile in Belgium.

• Noboa, who only came to power in November, is hardly an anti-left crusader. Criticism has rained down on him from the right, which felt betrayed by the president’s legislative agreements with Citizen Revolution, the Correísta party.

Backdrop. During AMLO’s six-year term, Mexican foreign policy has been erratic to say the least. This is readily recognized by career diplomats when they are allowed to speak privately. That said, Noboa’s move was unnecessarily clumsy.

• Mexico has the international community’s support. Noboa insists that Glas was prosecuted for common crimes and consequently lacks the right to seek asylum. Regardless, Quito has violated diplomacy's greatest taboo: storming a foreign diplomatic mission.

• Mexico has become a haven for the region’s unlucky left-wing politicians. It is their destination of choice for a comfortable exile, particularly if, after leaving power, they face prosecution at home.

• Something similar happened in Bolivia some years ago. During the brief right-wing government of Jeanine Áñez, Mexico granted former president Evo Morales asylum. It is rumored that the Mexican and Spanish embassies also aided high-ranking Morales officials.

The Balance. The stage is set and the battle lines drawn. Quito will emphasize its characterization of Glas as a common criminal; Mexico, relying on the videos showing how the police detained Glas—and dragged the indignant Mexican chargé d'affaires through the street—will continue to insist on the unprecedented, insulting nature of the event.

• But Glas is still in Ecuador and will no longer be able to leave. If Mexico could not protect him within the confines of its Quito legation, it will certainly prove unable to do anything for Glas now that he finds himself in a maximum security prison.

• The prison, curiously, is known as The Rock. It is not as impenetrable as its name might suggest, and some prison runs have been reported. It is unlikely that the unfortunate vice president, who is under heavy guard, will be able to do the same.

• Noboa, meanwhile, is experiencing his second major diplomatic crisis. At the beginning of the year, a clash with Russia threatened the all-important Ecuadorian banana industry. It remains to be seen whether this time he manages to settle the disagreements—or whether he takes advantage of the situation to move towards the right and campaign as a national hero.