Venezuela: Prosecutor Saab Accuses Businessman Ricardo Albacete Of Theft And Robbery Of Strategic Material

During a press conference in which he showed photos and videos of the raids on warehouses in Albacete, he stated that he had in his possession equipment that “is the exclusive property of the Venezuelan State,” which he used to melt them down and obtain money from equipment of the National Electric System.

He accuses them of receiving financing from abroad

He said that preliminary investigations have determined that “the detainees have received funding from abroad to support the campaign of a sector of the neo-Nazi far right that uses the elections (July 28 presidential elections) as a façade.”

Regarding Albacete, he explained that during the raids they found “irrefutable evidence. Everything found there is property of the Venezuelan State and there is no reason for it to be in a warehouse,” he reiterated.

Without naming them, he compared these sectors to the Israeli government and its attacks on the civilian population in the Gaza Strip, following the conflict that began in October 2023 in that region of the Middle East.

He linked the businessman to former Colombian presidents Álvaro Uribe and Iván Duque, as well as to the plane crash that claimed the lives of a Brazilian soccer team in previous years.

This businessman was the one who received opposition leader María Corina Machado at his residence when she visited Táchira state last June.

The detainees from Carabobo state were identified as Jonathan Lugo, José Herrera, David Lugo, Jhonny Díaz, Darwin Quero and Dixon Ramírez. They are accused of extracting materials from the Central Plant, units number 5 and number 6.

This group was arrested for having “stolen 16 sections of copper wire weighing approximately 400 kilos from the Planta Centro Thermoelectric Generation Plant.”

Meanwhile, in the Mariño municipality of Nueva Esparta state, Jesús José Gutiérrez González was arrested for setting fire to an electric tank in that town in the northeastern state.

Saab also referred to the extradition of Hector “El Niño” Guerrero’s brother from Spain and insisted on the theory that the criminal gang El Tren de Aragua was dismantled long before the government of Nicolás Maduro took control of the Tocorón prison in September 2023.

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Benjamin Wallace-Wells

Benjamin Wallace-Wells is a staff writer at the The New Yorker since 2006. He worked for New York magazine, the Times Magazine, and Rolling Stone.

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