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This site has been investigating Colombian 'entrepreneur' Alex Saab since mid 2013. Back then, this thug wasn't a Venezuelan citizen, nor a Venezuelan diplomat, but a heavily-indebted small business owner from Barranquilla, leeching on chavismo's never ending corruption. Disgraced narco-senator Piedad Cordoba walked Saab into Nicolás Maduro's office once upon a time, when Maduro's was Hugo Chavez's foreign secretary, and the rest is history.

The U.S. Treasury announced yesterday "Treasury Targets Venezuelan Oil Sector Sanctions Evasion Network", whereby Francisco D'Agostino, Alessandro Bazzoni, Philipp Apikian, Elemento and a network of six ships and 14 shells are designated "for their ties to a network attempting to evade United States sanctions on Venezuela’s oil sector." The news won't come as a surprise to readers of this site.

There's a great deal of excitement on news reported by Christian Brönnimann and Sylvain Besson in Swiss media, about 9 billion (CHF) worth of money laundering transactions originating in Venezuela / PDVSA done by some of Switzerland's finest banks.

UPDATED 19/01/2021 - 18:53 GMT - In late December two tankers journeyed to Venezuela with their AIS transponders turned off: Kitakaze (IMO 9221918) and Mirame (IMO 9227948). PDVSA's shipping line up shows these tankers loaded a total of 3.8 million barrels of crude, on behalf of a new client: Tracor Trading Company Limited. Data from TankerTrackers.com revealed the vessels' position at loading.

What happened yesterday in America shocked many around the world. We are used to such images, but few could predict they'd be enacted in Capitol Hill. Trump-supporting thugs storming U.S. Congress? This is beyond 9/11 territory. There's no WTF that can be used here. Few hours have gone, and still some Republicans duly reminded observers how far they've gone, while elected representatives carried on with death by a thousand cuts. There is no justification, other than misdiagnosed utter derangement, for what Donald Trump said / did yesterday.

Colleagues from Gotham City have started 2021 in, customary, brilliant style. Their unmissable newsletter into all the dodgy characters that pullulate Switzerland's banking sector comes this week with news about a rather prominent criminal, Alex Saab, and one of the most brazen money laundering establishments in town: Compagnie Bancaire Helvetique (CBH).

Sometime in May 2019, Daniel Lara Farias alerted me to a gig involving Gustavo Guaido and Juan Salcedo Marquez (brother and cousin of sorts of "interim president" Juan Guaido respectively). It was about some bank details related to payments, whose ultimate beneficiary was a UK shell called FIVENDES (FONDO VENEZOLANO DE DESARROLLO LTD). Guaido and Salcedo were said to have been commissioned by "president" Guaido to fundraise.