VenePirámides
In 2007, Venezuelans Marcelo Barone and his wife Elisabel Vázquez moved from Caracas to London. There, they purchased and rented properties, acquired Ferrari and BMW cars, and indulged in a luxurious lifestyle. Such extravagance wouldn’t be an issue if it weren’t funded by retirees from Itaipú, a Paraguayan company. Our correspondents traveled to London to trace the money, and their findings exceeded all expectations. This case is part of a staggering total of US$ 121 million that may never return to Paraguay.
Marcelo Barone (49), a Venezuelan, refers to himself as “Doctor” and claims to hold a PhD from an unknown university. He asserts that his specialties include consulting on public debts in Venezuela, Brazil, and Argentina, as well as “contributing to the creation of algorithmic models and the construction and management of trade networks.”
Such an impressive résumé must have dazzled the advisers of the Itaipú Retirement Fund. So much so that in 2006, they decided to grant him the first US$ 4 million for high-performing investments.
In 2007, he also convinced nearly a dozen advisers, including the trustee, to hand over another US$ 32 million. He obtained these funds without a contract, merely getting them to sign a sort of “Social Pact” that he himself never signed. Cajubi has no signed toilet paper from Barone, except for a few mediocre reports that were never supervised by auditors.
It was March 2007, and the lives of him and his wife, lawyer Elisabel Vázquez, were about to change radically from their modest home in Paraíso, Venezuela.
Barone upgraded his lifestyle from modest hotels to much more luxurious accommodations. He began to travel throughout Europe, and by the end of March, they announced their move to London. Less than three weeks had passed since Cajubi deposited the first millions of euros into a London account at Citibank.
To manage the funds without complications, they transferred the money deposited by Cajubi to a new account opened at HSBC. This was despite the fact that Barclays Bank denied them an account due to a lack of credibility.
From that point on, they moved quickly. They rented an office in the upscale Mayfair district of London, just a block from Oxford Street, the busiest shopping street, where Barone set up shop. In other offices in Ealing, his wife and a small team were situated. They purchased a BMW 7.5 for the office, which was outfitted with luxurious Apple technology.
For living, they chose an elegant apartment just around the corner from their offices in Mayfair (where they shared the neighborhood with, among others, the American Embassy). They lived there until recently at 100 Park Street, according to English public records.
On April 12, 2007, they bought their first property. Strikingly, they didn’t use Euroinvest or Plainc, the companies involved in business dealings with Cajubi. Instead, they utilized Manhattan Group of Companies Ltd, through Manhattan Houses, located in the same offices still used by Barone today. They paid US$ 4.4 million.
On August 20, 2007, they purchased a second apartment. They used another company, Platinum Saint James Ltd, registered in the tax haven of Guernsey, near England. They paid over US$ 6 million for this luxurious property.
Their lifestyle included two luxurious Ferrari models, the 599 and 612, both in black and imported from Italy. One was driven by him, and another for her. The cost approached half a million euros, about G. 2.8 billion at current exchange rates.
Euroinvest and Plainc became part of history. However, the same couldn’t be said for the National Securities Commission of Panama (CNV), which alerted in July last year that Plainc never held a license to operate, thus lacking authorization for securities intermediation or investment in or from Panama.
Our correspondents visited Barone’s home and offices, insisting several times, but no one attended to them. In fact, it leaked back to Paraguay, and they learned in London that someone was investigating the story.
The US$ 36 million taken by Barone is only a fraction of a tragic total of US$ 121 million that may never be recovered. According to financial studies, in another 5 years, Cajubi will face serious risks of sustainability, as reported by the ABC newspaper in Paraguay and Alek Boyd.