Forex board sold over USD 3 million to firms owned by former Sidor official

[naaman fletcher]

wo of the companies related to Luis Velásquez, the former Marketing Manager of Sidor, Venezuela's state-run giant steelmaker, purchased USD 3.17 million from the Foreign Exchange Administration Commission (Cadivi) since 2004, according to official records.

Dier C.A. purchased USD 2.90 million and Kelser purchased USD 271,133 until 2010. The number of employees in both firms does not exceed 10 people. In 2011, none of these companies requested foreign exchange from the Foreign Exchange Administration Commission (Cadivi), according to official data updated at March 31. The other companies (Aserradero del Caroní, Consyserv, Corporación Venezolana del Caroní and Ferreglobal) related to Velásquez do not appear in the official records of companies buying US dollars through Cadivi.

Velásquez said in a letter sent to news portal Primicias 24 that on June 9 he appeared voluntarily at the headquarters of the Military Intelligence Directorate (DIM) in Caracas, where he has been detained ever since then. Now he has been joined by Tatiana Orozco (known as the "queen of rebars"), who was transferred on June 23 to DIM headquarters in a plane from Puerto Ordaz, Bolívar state, south Venezuela. Orozco was arrested during a raid on a warehouse located in Puerto Ordaz.

In the letter, Velásquez described as "illegal and arbitrary" his arrest. He noted that "it is unspeakable to claim that a manager of a state-run enterprise has the capacity to dispose at his sole discretion of the marketing of one or more products without the participation of any other body or monitoring mechanism."

The former Sidor manager said that in his case authorities acted "in an unusually prompt manner that ignites doubts about this investigation."

http://english.eluniversal.com/2011/06/25/forex-board-sold-over-usd-3-million-to-firms-owned-by-former-sidor-official.shtml

Currency controls always lead to corrpution.