On September 24th at 12:52 PM, a Learjet 55 with Venezuelan registration YV3440 crashed and burst into flames while attempting to take off from Simón Bolívar International Airport in Maiquetía, which services Caracas. In this accident, two crew members were killed, while both passengers survived.
“Rescue protocols were activated, successfully leading to the rescue of two passengers, who immediately received medical attention and are currently in stable condition,” stated a brief statement released by the National Institute of Civil Aviation (INAC) a few hours post-accident.
Immediately following the tragedy, both smoke and the secrecy of Venezuelan authorities surrounded the aircraft, with limited details on the circumstances and its occupants.
INAC did not disclose the identities of the deceased, nor that one of the survivors was Ramón Carretero Napolitano, a Panamanian businessman close to the Venezuelan presidential family and a major contractor under Nicolás Maduro’s regime with companies like Landscape Vision Corp (Lanvicorp) and Caribbean Logistics Corporation, where he has had partnerships with his brothers Vicente and Roberto.
Since 2013, after Maduro secured power following Hugo Chávez’s death, Carretero Napolitano’s businesses quickly accumulated public contracts totaling nearly $800 million for constructing gyms, a baseball stadium in Caracas – now known as Simón Bolívar Monumental Stadium – a convention center, and supplying toys, appliances, or tires, as documented in a prior investigation by this journalistic alliance comprised of Armando.info, the Latin American Center for Investigative Journalism (CLIP), Transparency Venezuela in Exile, and the newspaper La Prensa in Panama.
Many of these contracts for civil construction were awarded between 2013 and 2015 by the Pro-Patria 2000 Foundation, then led by Carlos Erick Malpica Flores and Walter Jacob Gavidia Flores, nephew and son, respectively, of Cilia Flores, the Venezuelan First Lady or first combatant in official terminology. In this scheme, the Panamanian businessman would circulate millions of dollars favoring Juan Carlos López Tovar, partner of Iriamni Malpica Flores, another niece of Cilia Flores.
The disaster involving YV3440 and the subsequent secrecy from authorities confirmed not only Carretero Napolitano’s strategic role for Nicolás Maduro but also allowed for tracking connections to another route parallel to his dealings with Chavismo: his links with Cuban regime elites.
The YV3440’s flight path outlines a triangle where the regimes of Cuba and Venezuela, along with Ramón Carretero Napolitano from Panama, form the vertices. New documents obtained by this journalistic alliance reveal that the crashed aircraft was one frequently used by Carretero Napolitano for his regular trips, not only to Caracas but also to Havana, both cities where the previously mentioned Caribbean Logistics Corporation operates.
Documents obtained for this story further confirm the close relationships Carretero Napolitano shares not just with the Caracas regime but with the nomenklatura of the Cuban dictatorship: Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, grandson of commander Raúl Castro Ruz – brother of Fidel and his heir to power – has been another frequent passenger on the ill-fated aircraft. To add to this, in 2024, an employee of Carretero Napolitano, who handled his business in Caracas between 2017 and 2019, was appointed as Panama’s ambassador to Cuba, proposed by president José Raúl Mulino. The triangle is now complete.
One Airplane, Two Destinations
The migratory movements of Ramón Carretero Napolitano show that the Panamanian businessman frequently flew, at least since 2021, on the Learjet 55 that would eventually crash in Maiquetía. In 2023, he used the same jet up to 18 times to travel to Venezuela and Cuba, as per his migratory records.
Also traveling on the same aircraft but on October 30, 2023, nearly two years prior to the accident in Venezuela, was Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, the grandson of Raúl Castro known on the island as El Cangrejo. He made the journey from Cuba to Panama. The next day, on October 31, 2023, he returned on the same Venezuelan-registered aircraft to Havana, according to the migratory documents obtained for this report.
Rodríguez Castro, aged 41 and holding the rank of colonel, was chief of security for Raúl Castro. In recent years, while the privileges and luxuries he enjoyed became public, the grandson of the revolutionary commander made numerous visits on private flights to Panama, some on significant dates for Panama’s political scene.
For instance, on May 1, 2024, just four days prior to presidential elections that would see Mulino emerge as the winner, El Cangrejo landed in Panama on another plane registered as YV654T, with a crew of three Venezuelan pilots. There are no migratory records of this trip in Panama, but the flight manifest, accessed for this investigation, confirms it. The same Venezuelan-registered aircraft has been used by Miguel Díaz-Canel for official trips as the Cuban head of state.
During that trip to Panama before the elections, Rodríguez Castro was accompanied by Brigadier General Ania Guillermina Lastres Morera, who is a parliament member and part of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC). The military succeeded in leading the powerful Business Administration Group, S.A. (Gaesa) after the death of General Luis Alberto Rodríguez López-Calleja, Raúl Guillermo’s father, in 2022.
Gaesa, a sort of holding company controlled by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Cuba (FARC), saw its peak growth during Raúl Castro’s rule. Although Castro Ruz officially retired from Cuba’s presidency in 2018, he remains the power behind the throne currently occupied by Miguel Díaz-Canel.
Another notable flight for Rodríguez Castro to Panama occurred on July 1, 2024, the day when the current president Mulino took office. It is unknown whether the Cuban attended the inauguration ceremony or related events, but he returned quickly to Cuba on July 3, according to his entry and exit records from Panama.
The YV3440 is not the only plane that has transported both Ramón Carretero Napolitano and the grandson of Raúl Castro. They have both been passengers on the Panamanian-registered aircraft HP-715, a Hawker 800XP model. The Panamanian businessman used the jet at least 51 times for his trips from Panama to Caracas and Havana between 2020 and January of last year, according to records obtained for this investigation.
On the other hand, Rodríguez Castro flew on the HP-715 at least 15 times to travel from Cuba to Panama between August 22, 2024, and last July 7. His most recent trips for that same route occurred between May and September this year, but aboard the T7-77PR, a Dassault Falcon 900EX aircraft registered in the small European state of San Marino.
Websites dedicated to tracking flights, such as FlightRadar24, show that the HP-715 flew from Caracas to Panama on November 10, and that, four days later, on the 14th of November, it returned to the Venezuelan capital. However, by the time of this publication, the names of the passengers could not be confirmed.
This coincidence in the aircraft usage between Ramón Carretero Napolitano and Raúl Castro’s grandson is not the only link between the Panamanian businessman and Cuba.
Carretero’s close relations with Castro elite, who endorsed him to win Maduro’s trust, were again highlighted in November 2024, when Edwin Abel Pitty Madrid was appointed as Panama’s ambassador in Havana.
Pitty Madrid, a commercial lawyer without a diplomatic background, has a history as a loyal employee of Carretero’s Group, as he highlights in his Linkedin profile.
When contacted, Marcela Arauz, Ramón Carretero Napolitano’s legal representative, declined the interview request made by reporters for this story. Instead, she informed that her client filed a complaint in Panama against Armando.Info. “Anything relating to Mr. Carretero should be resolved between the lawyers or through the Public Prosecutor’s Office,” she responded via WhatsApp.
The Ambassador of the Carretero Group
On November 18, 2024, the Cuban Foreign Ministry announced that Edwin Pitty had presented his credentials to the island’s Vice Minister. Two days later, on November 20, he did so before Miguel Díaz-Canel, as confirmed by Panama’s embassy in the Cuban capital and reported by Panamanian media.
Up until that moment, his career had been linked to the Carretero Napolitano family. Beyond Pitty Madrid’s own reference in his professional profile as “commercial director” of the Carretero Group, his name still appears in various positions across several companies controlled by the family of businessmen.
One of the more prominent roles he served was precisely in Caribbean Logistics Corporation, one of the companies through which Ramón Carretero Napolitano secured million-dollar contracts from the Chavista regime, which has been registered for foreign business partnerships in Cuba since 1996, as revealed by the official Gazette of Cuba on December 9 of that year. The now diplomat was an attorney and a kind of “ambassador” of Carretero Napolitano’s company in Venezuela, according to documents from the Panamanian commercial registry.
On October 12, 2017, Caribbean Logistics Corporation held an extraordinary shareholders’ meeting where Edwin Pitty Madrid was named as “attorney” for the company in Venezuela. Among the responsibilities assigned to him were to “open, move and close current accounts and/or deposits”, withdraw “the funds that the company had deposited in banks, credit institutions, trading houses of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela”, as well as represent the company before the state-owned Venezuelan Corporation for Foreign Trade (Corpovex), as noted in the company’s commercial file.
Between 2017 and 2018, the state-owned Corpovex awarded contracts worth over $8 million for appliances, toys, and tires specifically to Caribbean Logistics Corporation. Additionally, in that same 2017, Corpovex granted Lanvicorp, another of the Carretero companies previously favored by the Pro-Patria 2000 Foundation, a $37.6 million contract for the “acquisition of technology equipment” aimed at implementing the so-called Fatherland Card in Venezuela. Just days before, on December 9, 2016, Lanvicorp signed another agreement with Corpovex for $4.5 million for the “purchase of toys”.
Pitty Madrid represented them several times in Caracas around that time. His migratory movements reveal that from November 2017 – one month after he became the attorney for Caribbean Logistics Corporation – to September 2019, he made at least eight trips from Panama City to the Venezuelan capital.
Edwin Pitty Madrid has also been linked to Caribbean Free Zone Corporation, created in January 2019, where another member of the Carretero Group, Ramón Carretero Marciaq, served as president and director. Some of the companies owned by the Carretero Napolitano family where Pitty Madrid has acted as resident agent or executive include Carretero International Corp, Grupo Enzo Corp, Lote Clayton Embassy Inc, Aqua Vita Corp, and G.W. America Corp, among others. The office of Pitty Madrid is located in the Rali building, where the Carretero Napolitano have their headquarters for Rali Bicycles, the original business and brand for which they are best known in Panama.
In the company Parques Lefevre, the now Panamanian ambassador coincided with Juan Carlos López Tovar, the political nephew of Cilia Flores who received payments from Carretero Napolitano’s companies.
Moreover, Pitty Madrid has served as the resident agent for at least nine companies with broad corporate purposes where Félix Rafael Falabella Napolitano, a cousin of Ramón Carretero Napolitano and who was also a leading partner at Lanvicorp in Caracas, appears as executive, as noted in the National Contractor Registry (RNC). Falabella Napolitano is also a state contractor in Panama. In Panama, a resident agent is the lawyer or legal firm that establishes the company and acts as its formal representative before the authorities.
Pitty Madrid’s trail also leads to the private jet HP-715, used dozens of times by Carretero Napolitano and Rodríguez Castro. This aircraft was acquired in March 2021 by the Panamanian company Aircraft Solutions Corp, where the now Panamanian ambassador in Cuba served as the resident agent, according to the official records consulted for this alliance. There was another peculiarity in that transaction: both the buying company and the selling firm, Fuente Holdings SA (Belize), had the same president: Luis Carlos Zambrano.
Neither the Panamanian embassy in Havana nor Pitty Madrid responded to interview requests sent by email for this report.
With a pawn as the diplomatic representative to the Cuban government, the Panamanian businessman completed his unique axis of action and influence between Caracas and Havana. Despite rumors regarding his health following the September 24 accident, Carretero Napolitano continues with his businesses in Caracas. The Chávez regime’s secrecy after the recent air disaster sparked speculation, and in some cases, became public, not fully clarified by various media and individuals of different credentials, including Marshall Billingslea, former Under Secretary for Terrorism Financing of the U.S. Department of Treasury during Donald Trump’s first term. “Who’s behind this accident?” Billingslea quired while hinting at irony in asocial media post, suggesting the names of Diosdado Cabello and Delcy Rodríguez, or even a simple “mechanical failure,” as potential causes of the incident.