Venezuelan
authorities have arrested two former bosses of the country’s giant
oil industry on accusations of helping a coup plot.
Former
oil minister Eulogio del Pino and Nelson Martinez, the ex-chief of
state oil company PDVSA, were arrested early on Thursday.
Venezuela’s
Attorney General Tarek William Saab said the two were detained as
part of an operation by the Military Counterintelligence Unit “to
dismantle the cartel that has been hitting the oil industry.”
The
attorney said 14 other people were the target of the operation and
that some were not in Venezuela.
“We
hope they will be delivered to Venezuelan justice,” he said,
without elaborating on the identity of the suspects.
Authorities
also ordered the arrest of six executives of Citgo Petroleum Corp,
the US-based subsidiary of PDVSA, last week, saying the people had
received bribes worth more than $50 million to sign contracts to
refinance $4 billion in debt without government approval.
All
those targeted in the government’s purge in the oil industry are
believed to be allies of Venezuela's former oil minister Rafael
Ramirez. The man, once known as Venezuela’s oil czar, is reportedly
stripped of his UN post as ambassador, sources with knowledge of the
matter said on Wednesday.
Ramirez,
who was Venezuela’s oil minister for 10 years beginning in 2004 and
during the time of former president Hugo Chavez, fell from the grace
under the leadership of incumbent President Nicolas Maduro when he
published a series of opinions criticizing PDVSA for reducing crude
production. He also censured Maduro’s government for not doing
enough to contain an economic crisis rooted in the slump in oil
prices in recent years.
Manuel
Quevedo, a former general close to Maduro, takes over from the two
industry veterans. He has defended the arrests of his predecessors,
saying they were helping a coup plot by sabotaging oil production.
“This
sabotage plan is aimed at achieving a repeat of 2002-03 when there
was an attempted coup against Chavez," Quevedo said while in
Vienna to attend an OPEC meeting.
Venezuela
resides on one of the world's biggest reserves of oil.
The
country’s output has recently slumped, standing at around two
million barrels per day.
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