César David Rincón Godoy and Nervis Villalobos.
The Diplomat. 13/01/2018
The Council of Ministers yesterday approved the delivery to the United States of a former Venezuelan high-level official and decided to continue the extradition procedure of three others. All of them are accused of the crimes of criminal organization and money laundering.
Specifically, the government approved the extradition of César David Rincón Godoy, former general manager of Bariven, the international purchasing unit of Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA.
The delivery will be carried out through the simplified extradition mechanism, once the interested party has expressed his consent to be delivered to the US authorities, “so it has not been necessary to initiate a judicial proceeding”, as in the other cases three cases, according to the Executive.
Also, yesterday the Council of Ministers approved the continuation of the procedure for the extradition of Nervis Gerardo Villalobos Cárdenas, former Vice Minister of Energy of Venezuela. The circumstance arises that the Venezuelan Attorney General’s Office has also requested to Spain the extradition of Nervis Villalobos on corruption charges.
Likewise, it processes the delivery of three others for a case also processed in Venezuela
The Government took the same decision in the cases of Rafael Ernesto Reiter Muñoz, former director of Security and Prevention of Losses of PDVSA, and Luis Carlos León Pérez, with dual Venezuelan and American nationality and who was director of Finance of Electricity of Caracas, another subsidiary of PDVSA.
The four Venezuelans are in provisional detention since last October, when they were arrested by the Spanish police. The American judicial authorities (specifically, the Prosecutor’s Office of Houston) have requested his extradition for alleged crimes of criminal organization and money laundering. The National Court must determine the origin or not of the three outstanding extraditions.
The four detainees were part of the environment of Rafael Ramírez, former president of PDVSA, former energy and oil minister and ambassador of Venezuela to the UN until last December, when he was removed from office by President Nicolás Maduro. The Attorney General of Venezuela, Tarek William Saab, has opened a criminal investigation against Ramírez for corruption in oil sales transactions.
