Venezuela, How a Narco-Terrorist Team Operates. The Fall of El Aissami.

The Fall of Tareck El Aissami? War among Narco Terrorists.

Under a series of internal operations of the Maduro regime, where approximately US$23b was recorded as stolen from the Venezuelan State oil company, PDVSA, the so-called Anti-Corruption Police of Nicolás Maduro has started an operation aimed at eliminating one of the most vital groups led by Tareck El Aissami, accused, along with more than 19 collaborators, a hundred frontmen, and business partners in Europe; The Middle East, Africa, in addition to countries allied to the Chavismo in Latin America, corruption. The head of the Chavista revolution, Nicolas Maduro started a very aggressive process of rearrangement of these groups, in this case neutralizing one of the strong figures of the Chavista Revolution, Tareck El Aissami.

As for now, Tareck has been dismissed, however, his main trusted men have been arrested, including the head of the Superintendence of Crypto actives, Joselit Ramírez, the highest-ranking official, and considered the right hand of El Aissami. Deputy Hugbel Roa, former Vice-Minister of Higher Education, who also managed, along with other detainees, a prostitution ring, including underage girls in Caracas, was also arrested.

Other detainees are Colonel Antonio Pérez Suárez, Vice President of Commerce and Supplies of Petróleos de Venezuela; and Lieutenant Colonel José Agustín Ramos, director of Security for the Orinoco Oil Belt, the mayor of the Michelena municipality, in Aragua state, Pedro Hernández, was also arrested on charges of having links to organized crime.

The judges arrested are the president of the Criminal Judicial Circuit of Caracas, Cristóbal Cornielles, and José Macsimino Márquez, who specialized in Crimes Associated with Terrorism. According to El País, the latter sentenced opposition politicians Freddy Guevara and Nicmer Evans, as well as journalist Roland Carre?o.

The Operation Against El Aissami and his Buddies.

Who is Tareck El Aissami?

Upon the arrival of Hugo Chavez to power, and shortly after the expulsion of the DEA from Venezuela, Tareck became the most important man for Iran and Hezbollah in Venezuela. The political ties that the Maduro regime has with Iran, and with the also Islamist and Shiite Hezbollah party, very close since the time of Hugo Chávez, made El Assami one of its ambassadors and natural interlocutors.

Over the last 18 years, Tareck El Aissami has had an ascendant political career in the ranks of Chavismo until he became an untouchable heavyweight.

• In 2005, he was elected deputy to the National Assembly by the pro-government PSUV, of which he also became vice president.

• In 2008, when Hugo Chávez was president, he was appointed Minister of the Interior and Justice.

• Between 2012 and 2017, he served as governor of the state of Aragua.

• In January 2017, with Nicolás Maduro already in power, he was appointed Vice President of Venezuela and Sector Vice President of the Economy.

• In February 2017, CNN reported an investigation that linked Tareck El Aissami to allegedly issuing passports to Middle Easterners and individuals linked to the Hezbollah terrorist group.

• In mid-February 2017, the United States government placed Tareck El Aissami on its list of people related to drug trafficking, money laundering, and corruption.

John E. Smith, acting director of the Office for Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), said in a statement that the inclusion of the Venezuelan vice president on the Specially Designated Drug Traffickers List "marks the culmination of a multi-year investigation."

“Tareck Zaidan El Aissami Maddah has held key positions in the Venezuelan government (...). He used his position of power to become involved in international drug trafficking, which earned him the designation of Specially Designated Narcotics Trafficker, along with his partner Samark López Bello," the Justice Department said in a statement at the time.

In June 2018, Tarek El Aissami was appointed Minister of Industry and National Production.

In 2019, the United States Department of Justice accused him of being a major leader in international drug trafficking and froze all of his assets in the United States and prohibited US citizens from doing business with him.

While in July of the same year, the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service (ICE) included him on the list of the 10 most wanted fugitives.

"In his previous positions, he supervised or partially owned drug shipments of more than 1,000 kilograms that left Venezuela on multiple occasions, including those that had Mexico and the United States as their final destination," ICE said in its review.

Despite the accusations of the United States, in April 2020 Maduro appointed El Aissami Minister of Petroleum.

Tareck El Aissami and Hezbollah

El Aissami has been linked to Hezbollah principally through his relationship with Ghazi Nasr al Din, a former staffer at the Venezuelan Embassy in Damascus, and his brother Ghasan. Both were responsible for recruiting Venezuelan Arabs to be sent to Lebanon to receive training from Hezbollah.

Ghazi Nasr al Din, whose name is also rendered as Ghazi Nassereddine, was born in Beirut and became a Venezuelan citizen in 1998. According to the US Treasury, he used his position as a diplomat to provide financial support to Hezbollah. He is also accused of raising funds so that Hezbollah members could travel to and from Venezuela.

For this reason, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) placed him on its most-wanted list, emphasizing his links to a designated terror group. The FBI also identified him as having collaborated with Tareck El Aissami in drug trafficking in Venezuela.

As a similarly close associate of Nicolás Maduro, Ghazi Nasr al Din currently heads the Venezuelan think-tank Global AZ and has made several trips to France, Germany, and Italy since leaving Syria in 2011. The US authorities also suspect that a member of the Nasr al Din clan oversees Tareck El Aissami's personal security.

The incident that most clearly exposed El Aissami's close ties with Iran and Hezbollah was the case of the Venezuelan passports being illegally granted to Iranians. Over a year, the Bolivarian regime had unlawfully given at least 10,000 Venezuelan passports and other documents to citizens from Syria, Iran and other Middle Eastern countries in an operation headed by El Aissami. The passports and visas were granted in most cases by the Venezuelan Consulate in Damascus.

Colonel Vladimir Medrano Rengifo, former director-general of the Venezuelan Identification, Migration and Immigration Office, has since explained in an interview: "You had a passport that identified the person as Hassan or Hussain, but the identity card corresponded to Pedro or Pablo: people living in Venezuela, or people who had already died.”

For his part, Medrano Rengifo, who now lives in the US, was shouted down by El Aissami when he tried to deport the beneficiaries of the scheme . "El Aissami, who at that time was Minister of Internal Relations, directly ordered me to let them enter the country," he added.

"People with these documents came on Alitalia flights from Damascus and arrived in Rome before leaving for Caracas. They came on a large Airbus plane that usually arrived twice a week (on Tuesdays and Thursdays) with 380 or 390 passengers [arriving] at the airport in the Venezuelan capital. Ninety per cent of the people on that flight had an irregular status.”

The report cited “regional intelligence officials” as having identified about 173 suspicious passports, visas and other documents supplied to people from the Middle East seeking to enter the United States and Canada between 2008 and 2012, overlapping with El Aissami’s tenure as Minister of Interior and Justice. Among the passport recipients identified were Gahzi Nasr al Din himself, his brother Ghasan, Hezbollah, Hamas and al-Qaeda representatives Mohammed Adnan Yasin, Falh Ami Taha and Muhi Alwan Mohammed Al Qaisi, and Suleiman Ghani Abdul Waked, an explosives expert and right-hand man of Lebanese Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah.

Tareck El Aissami has a track record of facilitating movement between Venezuela and Hezbollah, and a pivotal executive position. As security expert Joseph Humire asserted in an interview for Business Insider: "The future of Venezuela is uncertain, but the truth is that Islamic extremism has officially taken executive control of a national government in Latin America."

Hezbollah and Iran Deep into the Venezuelan Revolution

Recently, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant recently issued an order to uncover a gold smuggling operation between Iran and Venezuela that is funding Lebanon’s Hezbollah terror activity, bypassing sanctions.

In a signed document, the Minister revealed that dozens of kilograms of gold were smuggled on an Iranian Mahan Air flight, which is subject to US sanctions, from Venezuela to Europe and Syria. The funds from the smuggled gold were transferred to Hezbollah.

It said the smuggling ring was uncovered during a joint effort between the National Bureau for Counter Terror Financing of Israel (NBCTF) and the Defense Ministry, along with the Israel Police and the Tax Authority.

The document published the names of a number of figures involved in the smuggling operation, mainly Badr Ad-Din Naimi Musawi, an Iranian businessman who owns two real estate companies registered in Britain, “Lotus Universal” and “Strattonview Properties Limited”, and the international trade company “Trading Acs” registered in Dubai.

Musawi is also a key player in the Iranian efforts to use several Latin American countries as intermediaries to evade sanctions on its oil exports and financial transactions, the document noted.

It also mentioned the name of Hamid Evranjad, the CEO of Mahan Air, who is also part of an effort by Iran to strengthen ties in South America and ultimately use those ties to bolster its own terrorist activity.

Also part of this gold trade scheme is high-ranking Hezbollah officials, including Ali Kasir, the representative of Hezbollah's Economic Affairs Ministry in Tehran, as well as Mohammad Kasir, the head of Hezbollah's logistics unit who dealt with the transfer of funds after the gold had been turned into cash.

“Iran sells oil to Venezuela to evade US, European and international sanctions. The price of oil is paid in gold,” the Israeli Minister’s document said.

The Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force and Hezbollah then smuggle the gold from Venezuela to Iran to finance the activities of Tehran-backed militias in Lebanon, it added.

After the gold reaches Iran, it is transferred to currency in Türkiye, and perhaps other countries in Eastern Europe, as well as in Syria. The funds resulting from the deal are then sent to the Lebanese Hezbollah party.

And not only the Colombian guerrilla of the National Liberation Army (ELN) in the gold business but also the terrorist group Hezbollah, which controls its own mines.

Hezbollah exploits [the area] for its terrorist operations, to provide a service to the regime in revenue, and at the service of transnational corporations

Hezbollah operates several gold mines in Venezuela, including the Las Rositas mine, in the south of the Angostura municipality, in Ciudad Piar (Bolívar state) and in Lake Guri (Bolívar).

The Dome. The most powerful groups in Chavismo

Venezuela is controlled by four groups, that manage complex global networks of money laundering, drug trafficking, support of global terrorism, money laundering, and other criminal operations. These groups are:

1. La Cúpula, led by Nicolás Maduro, Cilia Flores and the Cuban advisers.

2. The drug "Cartel de los Soles" or, to be more precise, the Military High Command of the Bolivarian National Armed Forces (led by Diosdado Cabello, and supported by senior military ranks of the Armed Forces, and police agencies.

3. The shadowy Syrian Corporation led by Tareck Zaidan El Aissami Maddah.

4. The Diosdado Cabello family corporation (political power).

The Dome mixes the gigantic structure of the Venezuelan macro State and the United Socialist Party of Venezuela.

The "hard" nucleus of La Cúpula has been declining and is now made up of only four people: President Nicolás Maduro, his wife Cilia Flores, who calls herself the "first combatant" and the Rodríguez Gómez brothers. Jorge, who now occupies the portfolio of the Ministry of Communications, has been vice president of Venezuela and president of the National Electoral Council and mayor of the Libertador municipality; and Delcy Eloína, was president of the illegal National Constituent Assembly, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Minister of Communications and currently holds the Vice Presidency of Venezuela.

Nicolás Maduro does not make any important decision without its prior approval by Havana; and in general, the political strategies, measures or steps to be taken by the Venezuelan government are dictated directly from Cuba and are disciplined and implemented by Nicolás Maduro. So, the efficient and planned seduction that Fidel Castro exercised over Hugo Chávez, when he died and the "successor" recommended by Havana assumed the presidency, became a relationship of direct control over La Cúpula; in addition to having the long experience of Cuban intelligence agents and strategists to penetrate, repress, divide, misinform, manipulate and do everything necessary for Nicolás Maduro to remain in the Miraflores palace.

The "Cúpula" manages with total discretion the budget of the Nation. It is undoubtedly the most powerful group in Venezuela, for having the economic and logistical resources of Power. Its main criminal areas are corruption, overpricing, bribery, nepotism, commissions on how much public work is projected, influence peddling and embezzlement. They are involved in the Odebrecht scandals or the secret accounts in Andorra; as well as in the billionaires negotiated that emerged around the exchange control imposed in Venezuela since 2002. But, without a doubt, the uncontrolled management of the state oil company PDVSA, which before 1999 was among the 10 most powerful companies in the world is its main fountain of resources; A second, but no less important source of illicit income revolves around exchange control and the different government entities created to administer it: CADIVI, SICAD 1, SICAD 2, SIMADI, CENCOEX... The opacity and discretion worked and they were the umbrella for many businesses, some crude, others more subtle, to expose illegal fortunes.

Some peripheral members of La Cúpula also tried to make their own moves with drug trafficking and in 2015 they fell with astonishing innocence into the international trap set for them by the DEA, which is now known as the case of the Narcosobrinos Efraín Antonio Campo Flores and Francisco Flores de Freitas, nephews by blood and adoption of the first lady Cilia Flores. The US released these nephews of Nicolás Maduro, in exchange for 7 Americans imprisoned in Venezuela.

Members of La Cúpula participate in and benefit from the great mafia industry called “pranato” that allowed itself to be established and consolidated in the Venezuelan penitentiary system and that generates millions of dollars in income through La Causa, which prisoners or their families must pay promptly for surviving or obtain any improvement or benefit, for internal drug trafficking, prostitution and sexual exploitation, for food, for living overcrowded or enjoying some minimal comfort. Venezuelan prisons are hell in which Iris Varela reigns as Minister of the Penitentiary Service, who is called “comandante phosphorito” for her fiery and often violent defences of the revolutionary process. She is the minister who has lasted the longest in a portfolio because no one else in the power structure wants that position. Varela has not hesitated to take pictures in bed with one of the "pranes" or to take out prisoners to defend the revolution with weapons, as happened last February.

The Cúpula takes advantage of power, access to privileged information and having protection and the absence of controls or investigation of its activities to do semi-legal or legal business with access to dollars at preferential rates reserved for the State, obtaining import permits for food and consumer goods, the distribution and resale of food and medicine, the illegal or semi-legal exploitation of gold, large-scale mining of cryptocurrencies, the semi-clandestine exploitation of gold, diamonds and coltan in the state of Bolívar and of course, the use and usufruct of goods, planes, vehicles, armored trucks, escorts and facilities of all kinds provided by the State.

La Cúpula is directly responsible for many homicides committed by the “motorized gangs”, its shock force, both in the waves of public protests in 2014 and in those of 2017; as well as arbitrary and illegal detentions; and torture committed in detention centers against opposition leaders and spokesmen, journalists, and detained officers of the Bolivarian National Armed Forces.

The Cúpula, in which Nicolás Maduro appears as a main member, dubiously elected in the 2013 elections and who since January 2019 has usurped the presidency of Venezuela, is also the main person responsible for the general and catastrophic crisis that the country is suffering: hunger, the forced emigration of almost 8 million Venezuelans, death of children and patients due to lack of medicines, insecurity, lack of the most basic services and fundamental rights.

This story is in development...

Additonal information and sources:

infobae.com

aawsat.com?

www.aei.org?

alarabiya.net?