• Latin America Open race in Venezuela to choose candidate against Maduro

The attorney general, Tarek William Saab, took advantage of Palm Sunday to specify who are the 44 Chavista leaders, military and Boliburguese businessmen who until now have fallen into the "anti-corruption" purge unleashed within Chavismo, which really hides a power war in the revolution. Hours later Juan Guaidó, who was president in charge of Venezuela for four years, denounced that the Bolivarian regime "would be about to give an arrest warrant against me", in an attempt to mitigate the effect of the carousel of arrests, until now all Chavistas or linked to the plots of the power of the revolution.

"They sought to embezzle, in their criminal immorality, the national economy by damaging the community in general," harangued the prosecutor, one of the many tentacles of the Venezuelan state that Nicolás Maduro manages from the Miraflores Palace. Saab himself demands the "maximum penalty" for those now imprisoned, comrades of revolution until very recently.

Those already known have been joined in recent days by the presidents of the country's great emporiums, such as Pedro Maldonado, who was at the head of the Venezuelan Corporation of Guayana (CVG), made up of 14 companies that manage natural resources, gold, diamonds, iron, bauxite and other minerals. Maldonado served as a key player in the censorship of independent media during his time at Conatel, a state telecommunications agency.

Also on the list of corrupt Néstor Astudillo, president of Siderúrgica del Orinoco (Sidor), as well as managers and vice presidents of these "strategic industries", including the military of Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), previously arrested.

Almost all of them appeared before a provisional tribunal, handcuffed and dressed in orange in the style imposed by Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele. Including the three judges accused of corruption, responsible for cases of "terrorism" and who are authors of illegal convictions against part of the 283 political prisoners who today remain in Maduro's dungeons.

Among the list stand out two senior leaders, former minister Hugbel Roa and the superintendent of cryptocurrencies, Joselit Ramírez, main collaborators of the fallen oil czar, Tareck El Aissami. In recent days, different versions have been known, without officially confirming, that place who was an all-powerful ally of Maduro in Fuerte Tiuna, the largest military barracks in the country, in a kind of house arrest.

"The reason why El Aissami is under house arrest would be to avoid a possible escape abroad and thus become a greater problem for the madurismo. That would not be a fan, but a turbine," said Rafael Isea, former governor with Chavez and now exiled in the United States.

The fall of El Aissami, the main link with Iran, has been a political victory for Vice President Delcy Rodríguez and her brother Jorge, head of the Chavista legislative body and head of the group of government negotiators at the Mexican table. The pulse between the two most powerful groups within Chavismo, together with the one led by the radical Diosdado Cabello, number two of the revolution, and that of the military, has been maintained for several years.

According to estimates by propaganda media of the revolution, at least 3,000 million dollars, obtained from the sale of oil through intermediaries, would have fallen into the hands of this network of corruption. Independent calculations raise above 20,000 million dollars the amount that is still to be collected for the state coffers.

"They have managed to capture a part of these riches, mansions where they made terrible. We will have to tell all this and when we overcome this first phase we will show the goods, "Maduro said in a television broadcast.

The "people's president" has publicly shown his supposed indignation at those imprisoned, despite the fact that corruption has been part of the revolution from the first moment. According to Transparency International, Venezuela is the country with the most corruption on the planet, only surpassed by Somalia, Syria and South Sudan.

"The Anti-Hate Act is about persecuting journalists. The Anti-Society Law is to crack down on NGOs and human rights defenders. The Anti-Corruption Law is to end up imprisoning anyone who opposes power. It is always that: to get out of the way who gets in the way. It's tyranny," said political scientist Walter Molina Galdi.

In such a scenario and after receiving several confidences, Guaidó has alerted the international community. "They try to persecute me to calm their base, to change the focus of attention to the focus of corruption they did. The country is broken and has nothing to do with the blockade. This was the looting," defended Guaidó, candidate for the opposition primaries, to dispute in October.

At the head of Voluntad Popular (VP), the party of former political prisoner Leopoldo López, the former president of the National Assembly has added to his candidacy small political formations, including the Marxist and opposition Red Flag.

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