Claudia Paola Suárez Fernández, in an image from her social networks.claudiasuarezf
The model who represented Venezuela in the 2007 Miss World pageant, Claudia Paola Suárez Fernández, was hailed by the conspiracy that brought $2 billion to her country’s main state-owned company, Petróleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA).
According to a confidential Intelligence Unit report, businessman Luis Mariano Rodríguez Cabello, alleged frontman of the network, gave this beauty queen a $950,000 apartment in the Parque Residencial Campo de Oro building in Caracas in 2010. Financial institution of Andorra (Uifand) to which EL PAÍS had access.
Through an instrumental Panamanian company (without activity), the alleged front man of the corrupt organization transferred the amount of the property to an account at Bank Sarasin and Co. in Switzerland to the Venezuelan couple who sold the property. Rodríguez Cabello transferred the money on February 11, 2010 from one of his accounts at Banca Privada d’Andorra (BPA), the entity chosen as part of his conspiracy to hide his loot. “I am enclosing support for the transfer of $950,000 for the purchase of a property for Ms. Claudia Suárez,” the network’s frontman said in an email to a senior manager at the Andorran financial institution in April 2010, according to the reports documents.
When analyzing the transaction, the investigators of the small Pyrenean principality – where a court has been prosecuting thirty members of the organization for money laundering since 2018 – were surprised that this member of the network paid the amount for the apartment and only in the contract. Suárez Fernández appears as the buyer. “It is suspicious that Highland (sham company) ordered the transfer, but neither this company nor Rodríguez Cabello appear in the purchase and sale agreement,” Uifand agents warn in a confidential report dated November 2022.
Passport presented to Banca Privada d’Andorra (BPA) by model Claudia Paola Suárez at the account opening on March 4, 2009.EL PAÍS
The purchase and sale agreement is signed by the Venezuelan couple who own the apartment and Claudia Paola Suárez. The document sets the price at 5,795,000 bolivars. A sum that was equivalent to $1.3 million at the exchange rate at the time. This newspaper has tried unsuccessfully to locate the model and get the property’s sellers their version.
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The connection of Venezuela’s representative at the Miss World 2007 pageant to the conspiracy that plundered PDVSA is not new. Suárez Fernández opened an account with the BPA in March 2009 to deposit $1 million, this newspaper revealed.
The model then told the bank that she had a business relationship with the companies High Rise and Red Bouquet, which were controlled by another member of the conspiracy: Diego Salazar, cousin of the former Chavista energy minister, former president of PDVSA and former UN ambassador , Rafael Ramirez. And in the “Know Your Client” model (in English: “Know Your Client”), a type of third degree in which the company requires its customers to declare the origin of their funds, she assured that she would receive $ 500,000 quarterly want to transfer to the principality basis. of means whose origins lay in “insurance” and “administration”.
Luxury skyscrapers in Miami
Tracking the transactions of the main operator in Andorra – where he moved $1,144 million between 2007 and 2015 – shows that Rodríguez Cabello resorted to his opaque financial portfolio in the Pyrenean principality in 2014 to purchase a luxury apartment in the One skyscraper. Thousand Museum in Miami worth 5.3 million.
The property chosen by the alleged looter of the Venezuelan oil giant was designed by Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid, who died in 2016, and is famous for designing structures such as the London Olympic Aquatic Center. It is surrounded by a 216-meter-tall, 62-level building overlooking Biscayne Boulevard. It houses 100 apartments in a “six-star luxury” complex with a rooftop helipad, glass elevators, a double-height aquatic center, a sculptural terrace with a pool and solarium, according to the website of real estate agency Miami Residential.
In 2014, in order to acquire property number 1702 of the One Thousand Museum complex, Rodríguez Cabello ordered two transfers worth 2.1 million from his financial network in the BPA to an account at the Chicago company’s US Bank of America. Title insurance, according to the documents. These are two deposits on the total amount of this property, the contract for which was signed on October 12, 2014.
Image of the “One Thousand Museum” skyscraper in Miami, where businessman Luis Mariano Rodríguez Cabello purchased an apartment for 5.3 million. “One Thousand Museum”, by Zaha Hadid Architects (Miami, USA)
In 2019, Rodríguez Cabello managed to evade Spain’s extradition request from the Venezuelan authorities, who accused him of corruption. The active financial operator was not the only member of the property to be seduced by the architectural excellence of this exclusive Miami building, which has caught the attention of celebrities such as David Beckham, who bought there in 2020 for $18 million Penthouse acquired Vanity Fair.
Diego Salazar, now incarcerated in a Venezuelan prison for corruption, also bought a $15.3 million property at the One Thousand Museum in 2014 through the holding company Worldwide Traders Line.
With well-oiled machines, the network that plundered the Venezuelan oil company demanded 10% commission from Chinese companies, which then received bonuses from PDVSA. The team worked between 2007 and 2012 and included, among others, former Venezuelan deputy energy ministers Nervis Villalobos and Javier Alvarado. Through thirty fictitious Panamanian companies created by the Andorran bank and with accounts in tax havens such as Switzerland or Belize, the organization transferred the funds that ended up in Andorra, a country of 78,000 inhabitants that was protected by banking secrecy until 2017.
The looters hid their multi-million dollar commissions under the guise of consulting and consulting work – sometimes supported by a simple sheet of paper with several explanatory paragraphs – that investigators say did not exist.
An Andorran court has been investigating the colossal looting since 2015. The small Pyrenean principality prosecuted Salazar in 2018 for money laundering in a banking institution. And alongside him, oil company manager Francisco Jiménez Villarroel is also on trial in Andorra; the company’s former lawyer, Luis Carlos de León Pérez; including the Venezuelan insurance magnate Omar Farías and Rodríguez Cabello himself.
The European country’s judiciary also prosecuted in 2018 a dozen former directors of the BPA, the financial institution chosen by the corrupt conspiracy to hide its loot and which intervened in March 2015 for alleged money laundering for criminal groups.
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