https://www.laestrella.com.pa/internacional/america/220323/juicios-suspendidos-imputado-corrupcion-guerra-judicial-venezuela-odebrecht

Three Odebrecht lawsuits against Venezuela were suspended this month, while the State maintains a lawsuit against the construction company. Six years after the outbreak of the bribery scandal of the Brazilian company, there are no accused of corruption in this South American country.

Without explanation, the Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ) announced on its website the suspension “until further notice” of the hearings of the three lawsuits against the second country that received the most bribes from the construction giant, some 98 million dollars , according to its former president Marcelo Odebrecht, sentenced to 19 years in prison in Brazil.

Those hearings were scheduled from March 10 to 17.

Works such as the Mercosur bridge, which would link the Guárico (center) and Bolívar (south) states; a second bridge over Lake Maracaibo, in Zulia (northwest); and a rail system to link Caracas with neighboring La Guaira and Guatire, were left unfinished.

From a barge on the Orinoco River or from a car on the highway leaving Caracas, the gigantic concrete pillars of these abandoned projects can be seen.

Most of them were arranged during the government of the late former president Hugo Chávez (1999-2013), who strengthened relations with the Brazil of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Lula, 2003-2010) -also affected by the scandal-, in the midst of a oil boom that ended in 2014, already with his successor, Nicolás Maduro, in power.

The Odebrecht scandal, which exploded in 2016, involved politicians and officials from 12 Latin American countries – including presidents and former presidents – receiving hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes in exchange for public contracts on the continent. No official, in contrast, has been charged in Venezuela.

“He never abandoned the works”

After the scandal broke, the Venezuelan government unilaterally suspended its contracts with Odebrecht and raided its facilities.

Maduro assures that the works were “illegally abandoned by Odebrecht”, which the construction company denies.

Odebrecht, which has become synonymous with corruption on the continent and has changed its name to Novonor, is demanding that the decision to suspend the contracts be annulled and that it be allowed to finish the works.

“It is important to clarify that CNO [Constructora Norberto Odebrecht] never abandoned the works it was carrying out in Venezuela. What happened was that all the works contracts have been unilaterally terminated by the various state clients,” Novonor told AFP.

According to the NGO Transparency Venezuela, there was a cessation of the payments of the valuations” in 2016, at a time of deep crisis, which “made the work impossible”.

Transparency Venezuela indicated in 2018 that Odebrecht completed only nine of 33 contracted works and that the Venezuelan State had paid the conglomerate more than 13,000 million dollars for 18 of them.

Former Attorney General Luisa Ortega Díaz said, already out of office, that this amount effectively amounted to 30,000 million dollars.

“Earth in the eyes”

Maduro has repeatedly promised that he will finish the Brazilian company’s projects, although there is still no timetable.

“Odebrecht put dirt on one’s eyes, like they are the only ones who can build an elevated, a tower, we can do that ourselves,” he said in an official act last September.

On his side, the Minister of Transport, Hipólito Abreu, declared to the state channel VTV that all the works were “without plans, without designs”, for which an “engineering” and “reengineering” work was started to complete them now.

In parallel, while Odebrecht’s demands were suspended, a trial by the state-owned Metro de Caracas against the construction company for non-compliance with a project of 2,400 homes that were also not built, with an investment of 76 million dollars, is still underway, according to rulings from the TSJ.

The highest Venezuelan court, whose last ruling on the case was last September, has requested clarification and is evaluating evidence.

Former Brazilian President Lula was sentenced for the Odebrecht case, although his sentence was annulled. The former Vice President of Ecuador Jorge Glas and the former Minister of Works of the Dominican Republic Víctor Díaz Rúa were also sentenced to prison, as well as the former Peruvian president Ollanta Humala faces trial.

Nothing similar happens in Venezuela. The attorney general, Tarek William Saab, said in an interview with AFP in 2017 that complaints would be investigated and ruled out opening a file against Maduro, accused by his predecessor in the Public Ministry.