Seized show horses headed for auction. Do you have millions to pony up?

When Venezuela’s former national treasurer teamed up with other political insiders to steal more than $1 billion from the government’s coffers, he didn’t invest a penny of it in his home country.

Alejandro Andrade, a close friend of the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, moved to South Florida and sank his money into a sprawling farm in Palm Beach County’s horse country and a stable of exquisite European show horses.

Andrade’s son, Emanuel, rode them in show-jumping contests in the United States and around the world.

But Andrade’s days as a member of Wellington’s landed gentry are long over, after he pleaded guilty to a massive money-laundering scheme and was sentenced to 10 years in prison in November. Now, the most garish symbol of his greed — the 14 show-jumping horses seized by the feds — will be sold at auction Feb. 19-26, with private previews scheduled to start Monday by appointment at the Delray Equestrian Center near Wellington.

That’s right, these previews are only for people who can pony up big bucks — millions — with starting bids for each horse set at $50,000.

And for those who initially expressed concern about the welfare and training of the European warmblood horses with names like Bonjovi, Hardrock Z and Tinker Bell, not to worry.

“They are being treated better than you and me,” said Nancy Robbins, advertising manager for a Treasury Department contractor, CWS Marketing Group, which is in charge of selling Andrade’s prized sport horses.

Robbins said news media interest in the horses was so keen that she issued responses to frequently asked questions about the upcoming auction and private previews, scheduled for Jan. 28, Feb. 4 and Feb. 11. She could not estimate how much the horse auction will generate in final bids, but all of the money will go to the U.S. government.

From the time the show horses were seized by Homeland Security investigators from Andrade’s former six-acre spread on Sunnyland Lane, they have been cared for at the Delray Equestrian Center, a 100-acre training facility.

The horses are being ridden by a professional under “strict guidelines” established by Palm Beach Equines, a veterinarian clinic that has catered to the county’s wealthy equestrian community for decades, the auction’s Q&A statement said. They have been kept in large grassy paddocks, spent time on the treadmill and enjoyed full-care grooming, including daily bathing, air drying, body clipping, daily riding and jumping at different levels.

“Since the seizure, the horses have been strictly ridden on the flat daily by a single professional rider who specializes in smooth transitions from gait to gait, flying lead changes and ground line distances,” the statement said. “The purpose of this is to keep the horses sharp for preparation to go back to work jumping, as well as keeping the horse soft in the bridle for great response while in the show ring.”

As the auction approaches, additional professional riders from Delray’s Carriage Hill Farms who specialize in jumping will participate in the training and showing of the horses at the scheduled previews.

The auction’s statement also made it clear that the riders and trainers caring for the 14 horses “are in no way connected to the case or the horses prior to the seizure” in November.

But there is one thing that is not clear in the auction’s Q&A statement. Initially, the U.S. attorney’s office in Miami listed 17 horses by name that were seized from Andrade’s farm as part of the money-laundering forfeiture action against him. The auction’s statement, however, said that “only 14 horses total were actually seized by the government.”

According to the auction statement, Andrade himself has not seen the horses since they were taken from his Wellington farm. And no one connected to him, his family or his criminal activity can bid on the horses.

Although Andrade’s criminal case was unsealed in November, he had pleaded guilty under sealed court records in late 2017 to a money-laundering conspiracy charge. News of the case, which involved his secretly helping the feds target others in a Venezuelan government embezzlement scheme, reverberated from South Florida to Caracas.

Andrade, 54, sold access to the Venezuelan government’s lucrative foreign-currency exchanges both before and after Hugo Chávez’s death in 2013, enriching himself and an elite circle of other senior officials and a prominent businessman, according to federal court records.

U.S. District Judge Robin Rosenberg imposed the maximum 10-year sentence for Andrade’s conviction in West Palm Beach federal court. Andrade was allowed to surrender to prison on Feb. 25 instead of immediately because he has been assisting federal authorities in the massive corruption and money-laundering investigation.

This story was originally published January 22, 2019 at 1:44 PM.