The U.S. Department of Justice recently announced the indictment of Venezuelan national Raul Gorrin Belisario (“Gorrin”), the owner of Globovisión, a Venezuelan television news network, for his alleged role in laundering the proceeds of an illegal bribery scheme using offshore shell companies and foreign bank accounts, including accounts in the United States. Gorrin was indicted on October 23, 2024 by a federal grand jury in the Southern District of Florida and charged with one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering. The DOJ also reported that Gorrin, who was indicted in 2018 and 2020 on bribery and money laundering related charges in a separate matter, is a fugitive who remains at large.
According to the indictment, between 2014 and 2018, Gorrin and his co-conspirators paid hundreds of millions of dollars in bribe payments to high-level officials in the Petróleos de Venezuela SA (“PDVSA”), Venezuela’s state-owned and state-controlled energy company. The bribes were allegedly paid to obtain foreign currency exchange loan contracts with PDVSA – a scheme that enabled Gorrin and his team to earn approximately $1.2 billion in illicit proceeds by exploiting Venezuela’s fixed foreign currency exchange rate that values the Venezuelan bolivar artificially high compared to rates available on the open market. According to federal prosecutors, the criminal proceeds were used to pay bribes to certain Venezuelan officials in exchange for their support and approval of the loan contracts. Gorrin and his co-conspirators also allegedly directed members of their team to distribute the criminal proceeds among themselves using offshore shell companies, foreign bank accounts and false contracts to conceal and disguise “the nature, location, source, ownership, and control of the proceeds.” Gorrin and his co-conspirators are also accused of conducting meetings in furtherance of the laundering conspiracy in the Southern District of Florida, while some of the proceeds were also allegedly used in South Florida to purchase real estate, yachts and other luxury items using bank accounts in Miami, Florida.