Ewald Scharfenberg is the founder of the Venezuelan investigative website Armando.Info. For more than a decade, the site has provided readers with a unique window into the workings of Venezuela's authoritarian regime and the toll its activities and abuses have taken on the country's population. In 2018, Scharfenberg, editor Roberto Deniz, and two other Armando Info journalists fled Venezuela after the government persecuted them for their reporting on corruption in a state food distribution program. I spoke with him about Venezuela’s struggle to regain its democracy, the criminal nature of the Maduro regime, the shadowy figure of Alex Saab and the difficult reality of trying to practice journalism in today’s Venezuela. This translation of our conversation in Spanish has been edited slightly for brevity and clarity.
After the inauguration of Nicolás Maduro as president of Venezuela following last year's stolen elections, how would you characterize the situation in Venezuela today?
Well, there is a lot of uncertainty. On the one hand, I suppose that is due to a strategic decision by the opposition leadership, which is led by María Corina Machado and Edmundo González - who was like the designated hitter to be the presidential candidate - that greatly fueled the expectation that on 10 January, the date of Maduro's swearing-in, something was going to happen, something that was probably going to overthrow Maduro or that was going to create some kind of commotion. But the truth is that nothing happened…Edmundo González, who had insisted a lot that he was going to show up in Venezuela to take the oath of office against all odds, in the end did not give any further explanation as to why he did not appear.
Of course, there are many expectations about what the new Trump presidency in Washington may mean for Venezuela, if it will mean a new, greater pressure and a new type of pressure on the Maduro regime. It is also true that the internal conditions of the regime do not seem to be the best in terms of coherence, of, let's say, loyalties. It seems that all these years of wear and tear since the first wave of sanctions have had their effect within the regime…I think that today, despite the, let's say, somewhat disappointing outcome of 10 January, I think that there are still some ingredients on the table that continue to fuel uncertainty. And I think that although Venezuela is characterized by frequently having many dates that are announced as decisive and end up not being so, this year does seem to be decisive, either for a course in which the Maduro regime weakens and falls or the possibility, perhaps less so, for it to finish consolidating its power and prolonging its existence for many more years. So, I think that we are in a moment of uncertainty.
Opposition leader María Corina Machado remains in Venezuela today, but President-elect Edmundo González has not been able to return to Venezuela to take office. How is this situation different or similar to the one that existed when Juan Guaidó was recognized by the opposition and many countries as interim president in 2019? At that time, the opposition had a majority in the National Assembly, but today it seems further removed from the levers of power. Is this an accurate assessment?
Yes, but I think there are relevant differences in this situation with respect to that of 2019. I think the main one, and it might seem like something minor but it’s not, is that Juan Guaidó had not been directly elected by the voters in Venezuela. In reality, Juan was a kind of accident. Let's say in the sense that it was an indirect election. It was the National Assembly that appointed him
[after Venezuela’s disputed 2018 presidential election in which many key opposition figures were barred from participating] and it also appointed him following a rotating system in the presidency of the National Assembly, which the main opposition parties had agreed to at that time…Henry Ramos Allup, leader of the social-democratic Acción Democrática, had also been president of the National Assembly, as had Julio Borges, who is the main leader of Primero Justicia, a center-right party, and any of them could have become interim president. But it happened to be in a moment when it was Voluntad Popular, Leopoldo López's party, that was appointed president of the National Assembly and that is why Guaidó was the one who was designated. It was a kind of lottery that Juan won. Of course, he never had the opportunity to obtain significant popular support, because he was not a particularly charismatic character [but] I think it was the opposite, because he did not scare away the masses with his personality.
In this case, however, and I think it is the essential difference, is that we have what happened on 28 July, in which, as is already well known and demonstrated, there were elections in which the majority voted for Edmundo González, for the opposition option, and to the point that until today, the Maduro regime, Nicolás Maduro himself or the official National Electoral Council, have not been able to show the election returns where the votes are physically located and show that Maduro supposedly won.
So, I think that is the fundamental difference, right? And I think that there are also other differences in the international context, such as that a certain Latin American left has had a break with Maduro and with the chavista regime fundamentally. Gabriel Boric, from Chile, has been the representative of that, but also the left in Uruguay…Petro has followed in Colombia, is wavering, sometimes it seems that he is heading towards a break, other times it seems that he is getting closer to Maduro again. Lula too, from Brazil. I think that is also an important difference with respect to 2019, when support was very clearly divided between the conservative right-wing regimes of Latin America, on the one hand, and the left-wing or progressive regimes on the other. So I think that this is also something that has made the difference this time and that allows for optimism.
And finally, I think that another factor is time. The time that has passed, which has given the opportunity for sanctions, especially individual sanctions - imposed mainly by the United States, but also by the European Union, by the United Kingdom, by Switzerland and other entities - to have had an effect on some individuals in the governing coalition. Well, according to the testimonies that we have received from various sources in recent days, the regime is no longer so monolithic internally, because there are people who propose negotiating some kind of option that allows, let's say, some kind of reintegration into the international community and in particular that allows the chavista leaders and those businessmen that we call bourgeois in Venezuela - that is, the businessmen who have made money with the chavista regime - to enjoy their property and assets that they have abroad, which are considerable.
The Caracas regime has committed some horrific human rights abuses, and United Nations investigators say it is complicit in crimes against humanity. Testimony presented to the International Criminal Court in 2023 about the characteristics of the regime’s crimes (summary executions, mass murder, sexual violence as a weapon of political terror) is particularly horrific. And yet several governments in the region (the current governments of Brazil and Colombia, for example) have been very weak in their denunciations of the suffering inflicted on the Venezuelan people. What is that?
Of course, what you describe, Michael, is a contradiction, a gross one at that. Among the postulates of the left, which have always been in favor of human rights, at least a certain left - not, of course the left, which we could call Stalinist, but the progressive left - has been concerned about the rights of minorities, the advancement of progress, and if it seems contradictory that a left-wing government, like those of Lula in Brazil or Petro in Colombia, who also came to power with those banners, the banners of human rights, of the vindication of the black community, etc. nevertheless, they turn a blind eye in Venezuela to very gross attacks against human rights.
However, I believe that this is due to at least two aspects that I can identify. One is internal. And the fact is that both the Pacto Histórico [the governing coalition of Colombian President Gustavo Petro) and the coalition that supports Lula in Brazil, have elements, for example, within the Workers' Party that are radical, that are clearly supporters, for example, of chavismo. In fact, even today, in the public events that Maduro organizes in Caracas in support of the government, there are often delegates from the Workers' Party of Brazil. And that also happens with people from the Pacto Histórico that support Petro. So, I think that both rulers must handle themselves with strategy and with a lot of tact so as not to alienate the support of those sectors of their coalitions that could be very upset if there were a clear break with Venezuela.
At the same time, I understand that both Colombia and Brazil see a value in remaining as interlocutors of chavismo and Maduro. I think it is no secret that Washington has often appealed to Brazil or Colombia to, let's say, send messages to Caracas or to make some kind of diplomatic effort. So, I think it also has some strategic value for those regimes, which I certainly do not sympathize with…That is important, in addition to the fact that Colombia in particular, has many commercial interests. In Venezuela there is a huge population of Colombian origin…Perhaps you remember that when the so-called Lava Jato scandal of Odebrecht arose in Brazil, it was found that Venezuela was one of the largest clients of Odebrecht…So there are other types of interests as well that I think suggest Brazil and Colombia handle that relationship carefully. But yes, what you say certainly also underlines a fundamental contradiction between the left-wing programme in these countries and the position of these countries towards Venezuela.
But with the Boric government in Chile it is a bit different.
Yes, of course. It is something that is also worth highlighting, isn't it? Because Boric, let's say that he has risked many things by doing that, including the support of certain parts of his own coalition. For example, do you know that the governing coalition in Chile includes the Communist Party and the Chilean Communist Party continues to support chavismo and the Maduro regime? Clearly, in that sense Boric has put, let's say, a lot of meat on the grill (mucha carne en el asador). But I think that Boric also has a special interest that, of course, must obey political calculations to underline that he represents a new, different left, that is not that left…I think [he] is seeking to embody a more civil left, more willing to play by the democratic rules, to accept that an election and power can be lost, just as they can be regained. So I think that this also gives Boric an opportunity to, let's say, assert his difference.
Can we talk a little bit about the criminal characteristics of the Venezuelan regime? I have always thought that it is more accurate to analyze the government, especially in its post-2013 version, as a multifaceted criminal organization with many tentacles, a bit like the Sinaloa Cartel, rather than as a populist political entity.
Of course. I completely agree with that definition. In fact, we at Armando Info often refer to the Venezuelan regime as a kleptocracy, just like how one might define the regime in Russia, for example, or in Belarus. That kleptocracy is a state that is not just an ally of organized crime, but that has been taken over by organized crime and put to work in its interests. And I think that is also what feeds a lot of our investigations. At Armando Info, we work a lot on issues of corruption and organized crime basically, and Venezuela has become a kind of paradise source of these kinds of issues, because the organization of the regime is really that of a gang, of a mafia. In fact, above all, as you say, after the death of Chávez and the arrival of Maduro to power, it became a kind of federation of different groups or gangs that sometimes align, sometimes not…Let's say the final word comes from the capo di tutti i capi (boss of all bosses) who is Maduro [because he had] the public finger pointing at him from Chávez designating him as his successor, which gives him a certain political capital that neither [Minister of Interior] Diosdado Cabello, nor the Rodriguez siblings [Venezuela’s current Vice President, Delcy Rodríguez, and her brother, Jorge Rodríguez, currently president of the contested National Assembly] nor [Minister of Defense] Vladimir Padrino López have.
But nevertheless they have their differences. And to illustrate this for you, Michael, I allow myself to quote something that an internal source once told us that for me has become a kind of motto, that any leader of these internal groups of the Maduro regime could decide to have someone arrested and imprisoned, but then to free them all the leaders of all the groups have to come to an agreement. That speaks a little about that image that I try to use, which is like a kind of federation of gangs, which in addition is, we could say very schematically constituted by high-ranking public officials, a political leaders by some military officials and above all some official linked to the security forces…That is like the nucleus of each one of these gangs and in fact one could say that the Venezuelan regime is a kleptocracy in which the official political party is the armed forces and its governing body is the security forces that are closely related to the underground world of crime, let's say it openly, with drug trafficking, with smuggling, with the furtive exploitation of gold and other minerals. So, that characterization that you have made of the Venezuelan regime as a criminal organization seems adequate to me and not, and it is something that is perfectly demonstrable. It is not just part of anti-government rhetoric, but it is really organized that way and there are many facts to prove it.
To what do you attribute the resilience of a regime that has produced virtually nothing for the Venezuelan people for many years?
Well, I think it has some connection with the autocratic nature of the regime…I think that a good part of the failures that the opposition has had, beyond its own errors or, let's say, precariousness, is that they have always faced [the Venezuelan government] with a political electoral logic and in the end that is not important for them. It was important at the time when they had the charisma of Chávez and there was indeed great popular support for him, but that has already dissipated, it has already disappeared.
[The Venezuelan government] rules through fear, basically repression, and also something that I have begun to call the main Venezuelan industry, even bigger than oil, which is extortion. In Venezuela, there is a process of daily blackmail at all levels…The blackmail of some policemen who stop you at checkpoints in the street and ask you to pay them, say, $1,000 to release you [and of a] government that has gone so far as to give ultimatums to businessmen and finally confiscate or expropriate properties because the businessmen have not heeded the government's requests. Although it may seem ironic, I think that in a certain way, the international sanctions have also helped in this regard, and mind you, I am a supporter of sanctions, especially individual ones, but the general international sanctions, those that were made against PDVSA [Petróleos de Venezuela S.A., the Venezuelan state-owned oil and natural gas company], against the Central Bank, etc., that really brought financial difficulties in cash flow to the regime in Venezuela, which I suppose was also the objective that was sought. In truth, they contributed to the deterioration of living conditions in Venezuela, beyond the government's ineptitude in carrying out its management [and] especially since 2014, when the shortage of products began, the government sort of gave itself over to a model in which it simply made sure that it continued to have sources of income, not only oil, but gold smuggling, drug smuggling, etc. and left the rest of the population to deal with their lives and get by. And that has been very functional for the purpose of the Maduro regime, which basically has a strategic purpose of staying in power. Nothing more. It is not about making a revolution. It is not about favoring the poor. It is just about staying in power and in the meantime doing business that makes them millionaires.
What is the reality today of trying to practice journalism under such a system? Can you tell us a little about Armando Info's difficulties?
Thank you, Michael. That gives me the opportunity to speak about our experience.
Very early on, President Chávez - despite the fact that in his first electoral campaign in 1998 he came to power with the support of certain traditional media in Venezuela - declared the press in general, not only certain media, but the press in general, to be an enemy of the state. And that happened as early as 2001, which began with, let's say, formulas or mechanisms such as the public naming of the media by Chávez in his famous marathon press conferences, or the control of the supply of paper to newspapers, or the control of the supply of foreign currency, the opening of lawsuits that never ended for whatever reason. And well, with Maduro in power, that has evolved into a style more typical of a traditional Latin American dictatorship, closure of media, media purchases, prison for journalists, exile. Today, it is estimated that there are 500 Venezuelan journalists in exile.
In Venezuela, it has become extremely difficult to do journalism in general and investigative journalism in particular. As a result of these conditions that I have very briefly described to you, three of my colleagues and I decided to go into exile based on the investigations we did on Alex Saab.
Alex Saab was the great contractor of Nicolás Maduro, according to some versions, a front man for Maduro. In a documentary that we recently did here on PBS with Frontline [A Dangerous Assignment: Uncovering Corruption in Maduro's Venezuela, which can be viewed here], the prosecutor who handled the Saab case here in Florida confided to us that Saab confessed to him that he managed Maduro’s foreign accounts and in addition to each contract for the food program in Venezuela, he gave Maduro a share,...Saab was a very important character for Maduro, and since 2014, we were the first media outlet to discover him and began to name him and we ended up publishing up some 40 stories about Alex Saab, who became very powerful in Venezuela despite being Colombian, born in Barranquilla [but who got his] source of wealth in Venezuela [but his role was] secret, the government didn't even name him.
In 2017, Alex Saab, like any other citizen, sued us for defamation, injuries that in Venezuela take you to jail, but in many countries they don't. If you lose a defamation and libel suit, you surely have to pay compensation in money, but in Venezuela they take you to jail. That is, we were facing, the very certain possibility of going to jail because, as I said, he is a very, very important person for the Maduro regime and in Venezuela the chavista justice system, so to speak, has made it a custom in situations of lawsuits for defamation, of libel, to prohibit the defendant from continuing to name the plaintiff. That is, we were no longer going to be able to continue naming Alex Saab in Armando Info.
So, with all that on the table and on the recommendations of our lawyers, we decided to leave the country. First we were in Colombia. I was in Colombia for almost five years and two and a half years ago I came to Florida. Another of my partners is in Atlanta, another is in Mexico City and the fourth is still in Bogotá. Meanwhile, Alex Saab was captured in Cape Verde [in June 2020] at the request of the United States. He was taken here to Florida, where he was facing a trial for money laundering. But then, well, in an exchange that took place between Washington and Caracas. Biden granted Alex Saab a pardon. [In December 2023, the Biden administration freed Saab - who had been charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering connected to the looting of hundreds of millions of dollars through state contracts - in exchange for the release of a number of Americans imprisoned by the Venezuelan government.] Saab arrived back in Caracas and today he is a minister in Maduro's cabinet, something that I also think reflects the importance that this person has for Maduro, which also underlines that for us it was going to be impossible to continue doing journalism in Venezuela.
And well, that's how it is, and that is the harassment that never ends. Every day the regime's bots on social media, especially on Twitter, which is very popular in Venezuela, are insulting us, they are telling us that we are CIA agents, etc. And last May, just when we premiered the documentary about the Alex Saab case with Frontline, the attorney general, Tarek William Saab, came out and gave press conference accusing us of corruption, treason, etc. So well, we have always continued, we are persecuted, we are always aware of our safety. And I think that this case, this story that I have told you, very succinctly, illustrates a little the situation in which Venezuelan journalists are exercising our profession.
What is happening with Alex Saab today in Venezuela?
From 2012, when he started doing business in Venezuela until 2020, the government had never mentioned Alex Saab at all…But when the United States asked Cape Verde to arrest Saab and they did, the Venezuelan government begins to use a new narrative, to say that Alex Saab has actually always been a Venezuelan diplomat, with all his certificates and all his diplomatic credentials and that therefore his capture in Cape Verde violates the conditions established in the Vienna Convention on diplomatic relations and continue to say that he is a Venezuelan official. Because of the exchange that Maduro agreed to with Biden, Saab arrives back in Caracas and once he is in Caracas, Maduro first names him president of an organization created ad hoc called the Institute of Productive Investments, supposedly to attract international business, and shortly after he named him Minister of Industry and National Production in his cabinet. Which is the position he currently holds.
To me, something about all this is just not right. There was a kind of terror in Alex Saab’s family visible in Frontline documentary, no?
Yes. In fact, at one point, like in code, in a public speech, his wife - a very attractive Italian model, by the way, Camilla Fabri - in Caracas at a public event, says something that seems to be in code, she says something like “the United States has Alex Saab as hostage as well as our family.” So it seemed like she was in a way denouncing in a coded way her situation. And it's true. Not only his family, but the great partner in all the business adventures of Alex Saab is another Colombian who has the name of Alvaro Pulido Vargas, but in reality that is a false name. His real name, Germán Rubio, and he is a Colombian who had been convicted in Italy for drug trafficking in 2001. That is why I know that he changed his name in Colombia using bribes and other irregular means. And well, when Alex Saab was arrested in Africa, Álvaro Pulido was in Venezuela, and he remains in Venezuela. But to cut a story short, which could have been much longer, last year Maduro arrested Álvaro Pulido, Alexa Saab’s partner and today he is detained. He remains detained in Fuerte Tiuna, which is the main military headquarters in the west end of Caracas. So I think that the fate of Álvaro Pulido speaks very clearly of the credible threats to which the family and whoever had anything to do with Alex Saab were subjected to.
He continues doing business and making himself more millions doing business with the Venezuelan government, but he is also a bit of a prisoner of the Venezuelan government and that brings us back, Michael, by the way, to the idea of the Venezuelan regime as a mafia, because, you know the proverb, the saying that always says that you enter the mafia but you never leave it? Well, in this case, there is no way for Alex Saab to let go of his ties with the Venezuelan government, which, I repeat, has been very, very positive for him in terms of business and money. Because of all these circumstances that we have been describing, then yes, it could be said that Alex Saab is also someone who is being extorted in his own way by the Venezuelan regime.
Thank you for our conversation and good luck with your important work.
Well, thank you very much again for the invitation, Michael. I really follow you a lot on social media. Thank you for supporting our work in this way, which is often solitary, and any expression of support, whether moral or financial, is always very welcome in this task that sometimes makes us feel alone.
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