It’s Saturday night in Caracas, and the atmosphere in the basketball coliseum is electric.
The lights dim, drums echo, a golden shower of fireworks erupts, and chants of “Let’s go, Pioneros!” resonate off the walls. Dressed in bright orange uniforms, the local team’s players jump onto the court, accompanied by cheerleaders in tight-fitting dresses of the same color. The Pioneros del Ávila are ready to play.
At first glance, this game might seem just like another sporting event in a professional league. But this match has a dark and peculiar side.
The court where the Pioneros play their home games is situated directly above El Helicoide, one of Venezuela’s most notorious political prisons. Just a few floors down, while spectators sip beer and munch on popcorn, over 80 political prisoners remain confined in conditions described by human rights organizations as inhumane.
The teams playing tonight are part of Venezuela’s new Professional Basketball Super League, a government-driven initiative aimed at restoring the country’s basketball reputation over the past few years.
However, experts argue that the Super League has become a playing field for the regime of the authoritarian leader, Nicolás Maduro, and his allies. It acts as a smokescreen to divert attention from human rights abuses in the country, a mechanism known as “sportswashing.” In a report published this year, Transparencia Venezuela classified the new league as “a network of influence that polishes the image of a repressive and opaque regime.”
“This is an attempt by the state and security forces to position themselves in society, and that cannot be in favor of the values of sport,” said Jans Sejer Andersen, a sports journalist and founder of Play the Game, a Danish group promoting equity and sustainability in global sports.
At least two of the 14 active teams in the Super League are owned or effectively controlled by high-ranking security officials accused by the United Nations (UN) of committing human rights violations, according to Occrp’s review of public records and conversations with sources familiar with the league’s internal workings. There’s also a strong presumption that many other teams may have ties to the government, although confirmation of these ownership structures was not possible due to a lack of corporate transparency in Venezuela.
Additionally, last year it was announced that Super League games would regularly be held within El Helicoide, much to the dismay of human rights activists and opponents of Maduro’s regime.
Veteran Venezuelan sports journalist Cándido Pérez, now residing in Spain, described the situation as “chilling.”
“On the upper floor, they play basketball, and on the floor below, they torture people. I doubt there’s anything like this elsewhere in the world.”
Occrp reached out to the Venezuelan government, the Venezuelan Basketball Federation, the Super League, and several basketball teams, including the Pioneros del Ávila, for comments regarding the league and its links to alleged human rights violations. None responded.
The Court Came to the Mountain
The Pioneros del Ávila established their headquarters at La Montaña, as the concrete geodesic dome crowning El Helicoide is known, akin to a mini Poliedro.
Various media outlets reported that La Montaña was renovated and converted into a sports facility in 2022, renamed Elio Estrada Paredes Gymnasium in honor of the General Commander of the Bolivarian National Guard (GNB).
Washington sanctioned General Elio Estrada Paredes in September 2024 for his role in “the repression of the Venezuelan people.” The UN also identified the officer as part of the command chain responsible for torture and mistreatment of prisoners, specifically in El Helicoide.
Here the Pioneros del Ávila, a team founded in April 2024, play at home. There’s no publicly available information about their owners. What is clear, however, is that their uniforms bear the logos of the Interior Ministry, the state oil company Pdvsa, and Venezuela’s national tourism brand.
The public face of the club is Adelis Pamela Peña Soto, its president. Social security documents obtained by Occrp reveal that she has been an officer of the Bolivarian National Police (PNB) since 2023.
However, three different individuals, all linked to Venezuelan basketball for decades, spoke to Occrp on condition of anonymity due to safety concerns, claiming that the de facto owner of the team is Rubén Darío Santiago Servigna, general commander of the PNB, whose office is also located in El Helicoide alongside that of the Bolivarian Intelligence Service (Sebin), the political police of Chavismo.
Rubén Santiago Servigna has also been sanctioned by the U.S. for being responsible for arbitrary detentions committed by the Venezuelan police following the presidential elections and electoral fraud of July 2024.
The police officer did not respond to inquiries regarding his relationship with the Pioneros del Ávila. However, he has been very open and explicit in electronic media about his passion for basketball and the Super League.
“Right now, here in El Helicoide, not only is the National Basketball Super League being played, but also a wonderful tournament, a military tournament,” Santiago said on a radio program he hosts, Al Ritmo de la Seguridad.
“We have been fortunate to be part of the Super League, a league that is developing in the best way, pushing through, despite all the hurdles, it has turned into one of the most important leagues in Latin America.”
Another team in the Super League that plays at El Helicoide is Spartans Distrito Capital.
The Spartans, whose emblem features the head of an ancient warrior with a chiseled jaw wearing a Hellenic-style helmet, are openly led by Leonel Alberto García Rivas, director of special forces of the PNB.
Like Santiago Servigna, García Rivas was identified by the UN Mission as part of the command chain of special police groups involved in torture, arbitrary detentions, short-term enforced disappearances, as well as torture and mistreatment, including sexual violence and other human rights violations against political prisoners. In March of this year, García Rivas was sanctioned by the Canadian government for his links to human rights violations.
However, unlike Santiago Servigna and other team owners in the Super League, García Rivas publicly embraces his role as the team’s owner and appears at events related to the Spartans. Earlier this year, for instance, he participated in a press conference in a Caracas restaurant where the new roster was unveiled to fans and the media.
His wife, Qweany Vanessa Torres Toro, is the team president, according to the Spartans’ social media accounts. Torres Toro is the face of many public initiatives of the club, including basketball training clinics and the donation of balls and sports jerseys for disadvantaged children.
The team’s social media frequently posts images of Torres Toro attending Spartans games, sometimes throwing the ball in the air at the tip-off. In one such post from March 2023, she posed with her husband at center court prior to a game between the Spartans and the Diablos de Miranda. “Our tip-off with our president, Vanessa Torres 😍,” read the caption.
A third team in the Super League also appears to have deep connections to Venezuelan intelligence. According to their social media account, the Gladiadores de Anzoátegui are owned by Fabián Carmine Eliantonio Gamboa, a pharmaceutical entrepreneur and government contractor.
However, the Gladiadores carry the yellow and black logo of Team Espartanos, a sports collective promoted by Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Granko Arteaga, director of special affairs of the General Directorate of Military Counterintelligence (Dgcim) and recognized in independent press as the regime’s emblematic torturer.
Granko Arteaga, like his subordinates, wears the Espartanos logo on the sleeve of his work uniform. The brand has even extended to bottled aged rum, among other businesses allegedly controlled by relatives and associates of Granko, according to their commercial files.
The Dgcim is considered one of the most feared security forces in Venezuela and a primary perpetrator of human rights abuses, according to the UN Fact-Finding Mission. For his own role in these violations, Granko Arteaga was sanctioned in 2019 by the U.S., the European Union, and Switzerland. The sound of his name, according to a recent report on basketball by Transparencia Venezuela, “sends chills down the spine of civil society members in Venezuela.”
Sinister Dribbles
The excitement of basketball games and the pageantry surrounding the Super League do not disturb the terrifying reality faced by political prisoners confined just a few floors below. The inmates are aware that basketball games are played above them but can’t hear them because of the thick concrete walls, according to a family member who spoke with Occrp and requested anonymity.
The conversion of El Helicoide into a sports venue is just the latest transformation of a building originally erected in the 1950s as a reflection of the recent oil boom benefiting Venezuela and the futuristic vision that the dictatorship in power, led by General Marcos Pérez Jiménez (1952-58), promised for the country.
The project was abandoned after Pérez Jiménez’s fall in January 1958, leading to a series of speculative proposals on how to recycle the already existing structure. For decades, it remained empty, occupied only by squatters and surrounded by shantytowns and low-income neighborhoods, until the 1980s, during the so-called Puntofijismo era, when the vast space was adapted to serve as headquarters for police and intelligence bodies, which already at that time displayed a dark history of human rights abuses. It also became a detention center.
The use of the space as a prison intensified under the governments of Hugo Chávez and his successor, Nicolás Maduro. Currently, it houses around 80 detainees, including dissidents, journalists, and activists, many of whom report having been tortured or mistreated, especially at the hands of Sebin.
Opposition politician Freddy Superlano, for example, has been detained there for over a year without trial, unable to see his family or receive legal assistance, according to his wife Aurora. She told Occrp that all she receives are used clothes from her husband, which prison authorities deliver to her periodically.
“I smell them and know they are his,” she said.
Former Defense Minister Raúl Isaías Baduel, jailed multiple times after breaking with Chavismo, died in El Helicoide in 2021 after being denied medical attention, according to his family and human rights groups monitoring his case (the Venezuelan government disputed this claim, alleging he died while receiving treatment for Covid-19). His son Josnars, detained alongside him, claimed to have suffered extreme torture, including being suspended from walls and receiving electric shocks to his genitals.
“These places are designed to break wills,” said Andreina Baduel, daughter of Raúl Baduel.
One of the current prisoners is Javier Tarazona, a prominent human rights defender and director since 2005 of the NGO Fundaredes in Táchira state. The UN asserts he was beaten, suffocated with plastic bags, and kept in a punishment cell with lights on 24/7. Also incarcerated in El Helicoide is journalist Carlos Julio Rojas, who spent over four months in isolation until representatives from his guild were able to visit him on November 17. Human rights lawyer and defender Rocío San Miguel has been confined in El Helicoide since February 2024 without the right to contact her lawyer. Her family reports that she suffered a shoulder fracture that went untreated for months.
“It is a concern for us that El Helicoide, a place where systematic torture occurs, is being used as a tool to whitewash those responsible for crimes against humanity through sports events,” said Víctor Navarro, a former political prisoner and director of an NGO dedicated to preserving the historical memory of political prisoners, in an interview with Efecto Cocuyo.
From the Golden Age to the Age of Lead
This Super League, which now plays unreservedly in El Helicoide, invokes memories of previous, highly successful tournaments and an era of golden moments that basketball forged in those contests.
Cándido Pérez, the sports journalist, noted that he and others remember that era with deep nostalgia.
“You’d see the Sunday or Saturday games held in Caracas, packed with people… Wherever they were held,” he said. “And when it professionalized, the business opened up, and they were making good money.”
This system and the consequent evolution of the sport in Venezuela were first supported by the Special Basketball League, founded in 1974 by journalist and sports promoter Leonardo Rodríguez, and the subsequent Professional League.
From this period dates the remarkable achievement of La Vinotinto de Básket, which finished second in the 1992 pre-Olympic tournament in Portland, Oregon, just behind the legendary USA Dream Team with Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Charles Barkley, and other stars, who would dazzle the world at the Barcelona Olympics. The men’s team would go on to qualify for five World Cups and two Olympic Games, and became South American champions three times.
But in the 2000s, the economic decline and shifting political priorities began to erode the foundations of the league. “The problem was that, financially, profits were decreasing, and consequently, the quality of the imports [of players] also declined, and overall, the quality of the games was low, causing some to feel their investments were not yielding results,” Pérez explained. “So they resigned from the teams, some sold them, others transferred them to family members, and that’s what happened. That was the end of that golden age.”
The sports crisis offered an opportunity to Nicolás Maduro’s regime. In December 2019, Hanthony Coello, then Deputy Minister of Interior Politics and Legal Security, was appointed president of the Venezuelan Basketball Federation (FVB), the governing body overseeing the sport at all levels.
In a press conference on the occasion of his appointment, Coello announced that a new Basketball Super League would be created the following year, in a bid to revive the sport. “We had some good decades of professional basketball, but times have changed, and we need to adapt to the new times, we need new management approaches, we need to look at international markets,” he stated.
The Basketball Super League began in 2020 with 13 teams. Some were respected clubs with long histories, such as the Cocodrilos de Caracas and the Trotamundos de Carabobo, but the league also included several completely new clubs, including one that now plays in El Helicoide: Spartans Distrito Capital. (In 2022, the league’s composition was slightly adjusted, and its name changed to the Professional Basketball Super League after merging with another league).
The league has successfully recruited several international players, including veterans of college basketball in the U.S., and even two former NBA players, Dwight Buycks and Hollis Thompson.
Coello maintains close ties with the Super League, regularly appearing at games, and attended the league’s general assembly last year as a guest of honor. He did not respond to a request for comment.
Is It in Line with Fiba?
Although the Super League is a recent Venezuelan creation, it boasts links with the International Basketball Federation (FIBA) through the FVB, a member of the global body.
The FVF helped found and ardently promotes the Super League, and its president, Hanthony Coello, has praised FIBA’s assistance in developing basketball in the country, including improving the “national competition system,” which includes the Super League.
Moreover, the league also displays the FIBA logo on its website.
When asked to comment on its relationship with the Super League and Venezuelan basketball, and whether this partnership might be violating its internal policies on human rights, FIBA responded that “it had no information regarding possible human rights violations referred to in your inquiry.”
“We have no direct relationship with the Professional Basketball Super League of Venezuela (SPB),” stated a FIBA spokesperson. “The presence of the FIBA logo is solely due to SPB’s use of FIBA Live Stats, the globally recognized basketball statistics solution widely utilized by numerous national federations, leagues, and clubs worldwide.”
Although it is unclear how many people genuinely support the Super League and follow its developments, games are broadcast on public television, and tickets are free, attracting full stadiums. At a game attended by Occrp reporters, some fans waited in line for up to two hours to obtain a red wristband that allowed entry without payment to the El Helicoide gym.
The place filled rapidly to its full capacity. In the aluminum bleachers, people squished closer together, some sitting their children on their laps to create more space, while the Pioneros, dressed in orange, faced off against the Trotamundos de Carabobo.
Dominating it all, hanging high above La Montaña, is a large banner featuring three enormous faces that serve as a constant reminder of the Venezuelan regime: the late autocratic leader Hugo Chávez and his successor, Nicolás Maduro, alongside Simón Bolívar, The Liberator, whose legacy Chávez claimed to embody, even calling his movement the Bolivarian Revolution.
In large white letters at the bottom of the banner, the words declare: “Leading by obeying the people.”
