Venezuelan government says detained former officials diverted funds to opposition campaign

The government of Venezuela accused this Tuesday former officials of the Maracaibo municipality, Zulia state, including former opposition mayor Rafael Ramírez Colina, of diverting public resources to finance campaign events of the majority opposition, the Democratic Unitary Platform (PUD).

The Minister of the Interior, Diosdado Cabello, said that Ramírez Colina – arrested on October 1– “directly financed” “political and proselytizing” activities, as well as “personnel payments” outside the Mayor’s payroll, with resources obtained through the collection of urban cleaning services by seven companies contracted to collect them in the capital of the state of Zulia.

They “charged” for the provision of this service even though they “did not collect” the garbage, and that money, as Cabello explained, “was used to finance the Primero Justicia party,” of which the former official is a member, and to “finance activities.” of mobilizations of the Edmundo González campaign” in Zulia.

Cabello accuses the former mayor of being corrupt

In a press conference, broadcast on the state channel VTV, Cabello played a video showing the opposition Pedro Guanipa, former director of the Maracaibo Mayor’s Office – arrested in September -, confessing that he was aware of the “financing (…) authorized by the mayor Rafael Ramírez for the campaign activities of Edmundo González and Maria Corina Machado”.

Furthermore, Cabello stated that former deputy Juan Pablo Guanipa is also involved in this corruption plot, to whom “some “50,000 dollars a week” were “given,” even though his brother Pedro Guanipa said in the video played that the “financing” to “political activities” of the former parliamentarian “through the Mayor’s Office” was about “6,000 dollars a month.”

In total, the embezzlement, according to the minister, exceeds 2.7 million dollars, and “only in the contracting” of the seven companies.

In the last elections, Ramírez Colina supported the candidacy of González Urrutia, leader of the largest opposition coalition, which recognized him as the winner of the elections, even when President Nicolás Maduro was proclaimed the winner by the electoral body.