The Prosecutor's Office resorts to the latest proceedings entrusted to the UDEF to track the accounts of Monedero and Bescansa

The judge resumes the investigation into the alleged financing of Podemos through Venezuela

MADRID, 2 Jun. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The Prosecutor's Office has resorted to the latest proceedings commissioned by the judge of the National High Court Manuel García Castellón to the Economic and Fiscal Crimes Unit (UDEF) to track the bank accounts of the founders of Podemos Carolina Bescansa and Juan Carlos Monedero, within the framework of the investigation into the alleged illegal financing of the 'purple' formation through Venezuela.

The head of the Central Court of Instruction Number 6 has given the green light to the UDEF to carry out the investigations that he proposed in a report dated January 4 where the police unit gave credibility to the story made by the former head of Venezuelan Intelligence Hugo 'El Pollo' Carvajal on the relations between members of the Venezuelan Government and founders of Podemos.

Specifically, as Okdiario advanced and legal sources have confirmed to Europa Press, the magistrate has ordered the UDEF to trace the accounts of Bescansa, Monedero and the other two founders of Podemos who are in the crosshairs of this investigation, Jorge Lago and Ariel Jerez, as well as confirming the presence of the university professor in Caracas on specific dates where, according to 'El Pollo', there would have been a delivery of money.

A decision that was subject to appeal and that has finally been challenged by the Public Ministry, according to tax sources. The Prosecutor's Office has already appealed the first proceedings commissioned by the Central Court of Instruction Number 6, considering that this case, which remains secret, is prospective in nature.

Last March, the Criminal Chamber of the National High Court agreed with the Prosecutor's Office in that first appeal, instructing the instructor to limit himself to investigating the facts exposed by Carvajal and the witnesses questioned so far, not about people concrete.

However, that first resource of the Public Ministry left out the aforementioned report of the UDEF, so the Criminal Chamber did not rule on said 'dossier', which has led to it continuing within the case, allowing García Castellón order these new proceedings in order to corroborate the story of 'El Pollo' and the other witnesses.

This judicial investigation was closed in 2016, when it was only supported by the so-called 'PISA Report', but it was reopened last year as a result of the information provided by 'El Pollo' as part of the "collaboration process" with the Spanish Justice that It began when he was detained for extradition to the United States after spending nearly two years on the run.

The procedures initially entrusted to the UDEF were aimed at verifying what was reflected in the documents delivered by Carvajal. Among them, a payment order that the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, would have issued in 2013 to pay 142,000 dollars to Bescansa, Jerez and Lago for the commission that he would have made them to devise the "communicational political design" of the 'stand' of the state oil company PDVSA at the 2014 World Petroleum Congress in Moscow.

He also provided another payment order that Hugo Chávez himself would have issued in 2008 to pay 6.7 million dollars to the CEPS Foundation, linked to Podemos, to "promote a political change even more akin to the Bolivarian government." In this document, which was revealed in 2016 by different media, Pablo Iglesias, Jorge Vestrynge and Monedero were expressly cited as "outstanding professors" whom he would define as "natural allies of the Bolivarian revolution."

In addition, in a document included in this documentary block, the former head of Intelligence indicated that Monedero would have collected 600,000 euros by hand in a Caracas hotel that would have left the Cuban Embassy in Venezuela.

At this time, Carvajal is awaiting his extradition process to the United States, which was reactivated on September 9, when he was arrested by the National Police, during a joint operation with the US DEA, in an apartment in Madrid where he lived " totally cloistered", as described then by the security body.

The American power claims him for alleged crimes of arms and drug trafficking. His delivery to Washington was approved in 2020, but it could not materialize because 'El Pollo' fled in November 2019, although his defense emphasizes that he never left Spain.

After several comings and goings, his extradition to the United States continues to be paralyzed because he has presented a new asylum request in which he appeals, precisely, to that "collaboration process" with the Spanish courts so as not to be sent to Washington.

The former head of Military Counterintelligence with Chávez and Maduro is persecuted in Washington for events that occurred between 1999 and 2019, when he would have belonged to the so-called 'Cartel of the Suns', a criminal organization supposedly managed by 'Chavista' charges that, with the alleged collaboration of the FARC and other armed groups, would have introduced large quantities of drugs into the United States.