Husband of ex-Venezuelan treasurer extradited from Spain to Miami in huge corruption case
The husband of a former Venezuelan national treasurer who was charged with his wife and a wealthy businessman in a massive corruption case tied to Miami’s banking system has been extradited from Spain to face an indictment in South Florida federal court.
Adrián Velásquez Figueroa, a former presidential security guard, and his wife, former Venezuelan treasurer Claudia Patricia Díaz Guillén, who was extradited from Spain in May, are charged with accepting millions of dollars in bribes from Raúl Gorrín, who has had close relationships with Venezuela’s socialist presidents for more than a decade.
Velásquez, 43, was brought on a flight from Spain on Thursday by federal agents with Homeland Security Investigations. He had his first appearance in West Palm Beach federal court Friday morning, when he was ordered detained by a magistrate judge after prosecutors said he was a flight risk. Velásquez is scheduled for arraignment on Wednesday. His defense attorney, Andrew Feldman, said his client plans to plead not guilty, declining further comment.
Gorrín, 54, who owns a TV station in Venezuela along with now-frozen luxury properties in Miami and New York, is considered a fugitive after being indicted four years ago as the mastermind of the bribery conspiracy during the presidency of the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, who died in 2013. Gorrín continued to wield his influence during the presidency of Chávez’s successor, Nicolás Maduro, according to federal authorities.
A federal grand jury charged Gorrín with a foreign-corruption conspiracy and all three defendants with a money-laundering scheme. The indictment was built upon an earlier case brought against Gorrín in 2018. The connection to Miami’s banking system is the foundation of the money-laundering case, which centers on the Venezuelan treasury’s issuance of bonds and the Gorrín-led group’s exploitation of the government’s bolivar-dollar exchange system.
All three defendants are accused of using Miami bank accounts to receive and hide millions stolen from the Venezuelan government a decade ago, according to the indictment.
“ln total, [Gorrín] paid hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes to secure the rights to engage in over $1 billion in foreign currency exchange transactions that resulted in profits to [him] of hundreds of millions of dollars,” says the indictment, brought by prosecutors Kurt Lunkenheimer and Paul Hayden.
To secure “this improper advantage,” Gorrín used both personal and corporate bank accounts “to wire bribe payments” to Miami for Díaz and her husband as well as her predecessor as Venezuela’s national treasurer, the indictment says.
“To conceal the payments, [Gorrín] together with others, used bank accounts held in the name of shell companies and disguised a number of bribe payments for the benefit of [Díaz] by making the payments to [Velásquez], the spouse of [Díaz], instead of to [Díaz] herself,” the indictment says.
Díaz, 49, a former naval officer and a former nurse for Chávez, served as Venezuela’s national treasurer from 2011-13.
After her extradition from Spain in May, Díaz tried to persuade a magistrate judge to release her from a federal lockup by allowing her to stay with her mother-in-law at a home in Key Biscayne. But Magistrate Judge William Matthewman sided with federal prosecutors, who urged him to reject her request for a $1 million personal surety bond, saying she was a flight risk.
Díaz’s defense attorney, Marissel Descalzo, argued for her client’s release on bond and entered her not guilty plea at an arraignment in West Palm Beach federal court.
Díaz succeeded Alejandro Andrade as Venezuela’s treasurer. Andrade, who had once been Chávez’s bodyguard, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 10 years in 2018 after cooperating with U.S. authorities and secretly providing evidence on Díaz, her husband, Gorrín, and a Venezuelan banker who operated a bank in the Dominican Republic to steer some of the bribery payments to the group, according to the indictment and other court records. Andrade was released from federal prison earlier this year.
The couple, along with Gorrín, are among dozens of former Venezuelan government officials, business people and associates who have been charged with money laundering in Miami stemming from a series of foreign corruption probes led by Homeland Security Investigations’ El Dorado Task Force South and the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
This story was originally published October 14, 2022 at 1:00 PM.
