A federal grand jury in the Southern District of Florida on Wednesday charged Raúl Gorrín, a Venezuelan businessman with close ties to socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro, for his involvement in a $1.2-billion money laundering scheme.
Gorrín, 55-year-old fugitive from U.S. justice on multiple corruption charges since 2018, stands accused alongside others of laundering funds obtained from Venezuela’s state-owned PDVSA oil company in exchange for hundreds of millions in bribe payments to Venezuelan regime officials. If convicted, Gorrín faces up to 20 years in prison.
According to court documents, Gorrín and other co-conspirators laundered proceeds of an illegal bribery scheme using the U.S. financial system as well as various foreign bank accounts between 2014 and 2018, paying millions of dollars in bribes to high-level Venezuelan officials to obtain foreign currency exchange loan contracts with PDVSA.
“Gorrín and his co-conspirators subsequently directed the laundering of the illicit proceeds, in part, in the Southern District of Florida, where they purchased real estate, yachts, and other luxury items,” the U.S. Department of Justice claimed in a press release. “To conceal the movement of the bribe payments and illicit funds, Gorrín and his co-conspirators used a series of shell companies and offshore bank accounts.”
“Gorrín’s alleged conduct enriched corrupt government officials and exploited the U.S. financial system to facilitate these crimes,” Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Nicole M. Argentieri said. “Together with our partners, the Criminal Division remains committed to ensuring that the United States is not a safe haven for carrying out money laundering schemes or hiding criminal proceeds.”
Gorrín has been widely accused of playing a major role in the finances of the Maduro regime. In 2013, the same year Maduro rose to power, Gorrín finalized the purchase of an 80-percent majority stake of Globovision, Venezuela’s only private news channel and previously a source of critical views of the ruling socialist regime.
Under Gorrín’s ownership, Globovision dramatically shifted its editorial line, going from opposing the Venezuelan socialist regime to adopting a self-proclaimed “centrist” stance that critics denounced as “self-censorship” in favor of the Maduro regime.
In 2019, under the administration of former President Donald Trump, the United States sanctioned Gorrín, accusing him of corruption and of taking advantage of Venezuela’s draconian currency exchange controls to illicitly obtain more than $2.4 billion in corrupt proceeds.
Since 2003, the Venezuelan socialists imposed a strict — and incredibly corrupt — currency control system that prevented Venezuelans from freely exchanging the Venezuelan bolivar with the United States dollar and other foreign currencies while also establishing exchange rates and strict caps on the sums individuals or companies could exchange per year or use abroad. The controls were partially lifted in 2018 after the collapse of Venezuela’s socialist economy.
Gorrín was declared a fugitive of U.S. justice in September 2018, when he was accused of taking advantage of Venezuela’s corrupt exchange system, allegedly bribing Venezuelan officials to allow him to carry out currency exchange operations from which he obtained “undue” benefit. In that same year, U.S. authorities seized 24 properties that Gorrín had purchased in the United States, 17 of which were located in Florida and the rest in New York.
Gorrín is believed to have maintained close ties to Alejandro Andrade Cedeño, a retired Venezuelan military who once was late dictator Hugo Chávez’s friend and bodyguard who lived a luxury lifestyle in the United States.
A U.S. court sentenced Andrade to ten years in prison in 2018 for money laundering. He was released in 2023 as per the terms of a guilty plea bargain. U.S. authorities accused Gorrín of conspiring with Andrade and others to launder money through the Venezuelan currency exchange system.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
