Posted on 05/23/2002 7:56:31 PM PDT by RedWhiteBlue
Chávez faces $2.3 billion scandal
The Central Bank of Venezuela (BCV) said Wednesday that it never received $2.3 billion from the government destined for a rainy day fund, plunging the administration of President Hugo Chávez into a major misappropriation scandal.
Domingo Maza Zavala, director of BCV, the institution that administers the nation’s Macro Economic Stabilization Fund (FIEM), said BCV was not credited the money it needed to transfer the $2.3 into the Fund.The government requested and was granted permission to appropriate the equivalent of $2.3 billion from the National Treasury by the National Assembly early this year listing the FIEM as the destination of the whole sum.
The $2.3 billion amounted to windfall profits derived from petroleum exports, in accordance to a law calling for the government to set aside anything over $12 per barrel into an emergency of rainy day fund.
Influential afternoon newspaper Tal Cual charged Wednesday that the government had incurred into “a mega corruption” and said Chávez owed the nation an explanation and to reveal the true destiny of the money.
“Without any doubt,” said Tal Cual,” it (the government) used part of the money to cover ordinary government expenditures, but a fair amount was used to finance the expenses and trips to Cuba of the Bolivarian Circles,” the government’s highly criticized militia.
Nine years ago former President Carlos Andrés Pérez was removed from office after been found guilty of misappropriation of less than $250,000 in public funds.
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