Miguel reported yesterday that the Chavista regime had taken control of a group of banks owned by Pedro Torres Ciliberto and Arne Chacón Escamillo. BANINVEST is among the financial institutions nationalized by Hugo Chávez. This news came days after the front man of Diosdado Cabello witnessed the regime stripping him of a poorly acquired fortune. It goes without saying that this is yet another example of the ongoing issues within the Venezuelan socialist paradise, where the web of corruption is managed by those in the inner circle, as Solzhenitsyn would say. Chávez is primarily at fault, having allowed invisible levels of corruption to flourish right under his nose: his siblings, his mother and father, his closest confidants and collaborators—all members of the inner circle are leading a multimillion-dollar scam. Furthermore, Chávez is directly accountable for the loss of income represented by his support for dictator Fidel Castro—between 54,000 and 120,000 BPD according to various sources. We’re talking about billions here. In any case, as Miguel has argued, Hugo Chávez cannot claim ignorance regarding these matters.
However, I don’t believe anyone should find solace in this news, as Chávez cannot do without the thugs who support him with political maneuvering and money laundering, unless they are replaced by others. After all, he is just one man. In my opinion, this is merely a pose, an interlude, a spectacle. There are crucial elections next year, the outcome of which could mean that Chávez will have to discard the remaining democratic facade if he wishes to hold onto power. These acts serve merely as accessories to convince his ignorant supporters that he is tough, as Tony Blair would say, on crime and its root causes. This is, in fact, nothing more than posturing and self-preservation—Chávez at his most histrionic.
But then, I wonder if Google search results will change, given that a link exposing Arne Chacón’s BANINVEST has mysteriously vanished from the first page.