The former nurse of late Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez was found guilty of money laundering in connection with bribes paid by the billionaire to secure lucrative cash transactions when she was the country’s national treasurer.
It only took a jury in South Florida hours to deliberate to find Claudia Diaz and her husband Adrian Velasquez guilty on five of the six counts detailed in the 2020 indictment, charging them with taking at least $4.2 million in bribes. dollars.
The pair’s trial was seen as a critical test of federal prosecutors’ ability to prosecute so-called Venezuelan kleptocrats for squandering the oil-rich country.
According to the indictment, the couple received payments from companies controlled by Venezuelan co-defendant, fugitive media mogul Raul Gorrin.
The government’s case relied heavily on the testimony of one of Díaz’s predecessors as treasurer, Alejandro Andrade, who took testimony to confirm that the financial arrangement he had made with Gorrin continued under Díaz’s auspices.
Like Diaz, Andrade, a former presidential security official, used personal connections with Chávez to rise through the ranks of the Venezuelan army and state, amassing a huge fortune almost overnight.
In 2021, he was released from prison after serving less than half of his 10-year sentence for his involvement in a scheme to embezzle millions from the public treasury.
As part of his protection agreement, he lost more than $260 million in cash and assets, including a Palm Beach mansion, luxury cars, show horses, and several Rolex and Hublot watches.
The trial comes as the normally hostile relationship between the United States and Venezuelans is beginning to soften after the Trump-era “maximum pressure” policy to oust President Nicolás Maduro stalled.
The Biden administration recently eased oil sanctions against the OPEC nation, allowing U.S. oil company Chevron to resume production for the first time in more than three years to bolster ongoing negotiations with the opposition.
But ongoing criminal investigations against Venezuelan infiltrators remain under close scrutiny in South Florida, home to millions of Venezuelans, Cubans and Nicaraguans fleeing leftist rule in their homelands.