Son-in-law of top foe of Venezuela’s president sentenced to 30 months on money laundering charge

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MIAMI (AP) — The son-in-law of a prominent Venezuelan opposition leader was sentenced Tuesday to two and a half years in prison for his role in a vast conspiracy to siphon $1.2 billion from the state-owned oil company, some of which allegedly landed into accounts controlled by President Nicolás Maduro ’s stepsons.

Fernando Vuteff, 53, was arrested on a U.S. warrant in 2022 in Switzerland while on a visit to retrieve a valuable watch from a safe deposit box held at a bank in Zurich. The Argentine asset manager is the son-in-law of former Caracas Mayor Antonio Ledezma, a fierce Maduro opponent. He was charged in Miami federal court with laundering bribes and illicit proceeds from a fake foreign currency exchange scheme involving senior Venezuelan officials.

Vuteff, in a November deposition to Swiss prosecutors, described feeling panicked when he learned that three sons of Venezuelan First Lady Cilia Flores from a previous relationship were behind financial accounts held in the name of four Scotland-registered shell companies he helped set up. The discovery came after a 2015 meeting he arranged for an associate in Malta at which “Los Chamos” — Venezuelan slang for “the kids” — showed up unexpectedly.

“We had to close the accounts. But it was very difficult to close these accounts because each account had over $100 million in it. Who would accept that amount of money so quickly?,” Vuteff told the Swiss prosecutors in Miami, explaining how over the next two years he was pressured to gradually transfer the money out of the accounts.

“This pressure included threats because of the political position these people had,” he said, referring to Maduro’s stepsons. “They weren’t normal people.”

A transcript of the deposition was provided to The Associated Press by someone familiar with the investigation on the condition of anonymity since the Swiss investigation is ongoing.

Corruption is rampant in Venezuela — the country trails only Somalia in a widely cited ranking of 180 countries for perceived levels of graft — and U.S. prosecutors have uncovered billions in fraud and bribes connected to top officials in recent years.

But the prosecutorial pressure, which includes indictments for drug trafficking against Maduro and several aides, has done little to loosen the self-described socialist leader’s grip on power. Maduro is set to be sworn in Jan. 10 for a third six-year term after claiming victory in this summer’s presidential election despite widespread evidence his opponent won by a two-to-one margin.

Meanwhile, the once abundant Venezuela caseload has dried, as several key prosecutors in Miami have resigned, the Justice Department has turned its attention to national security probes in China and Russia, and the Biden administration has dangled sanctions relief in a so far futile effort to entice Maduro into changing course.

Vuteff’s is one of the highest profile defendants to have been arrested as part of Operation Money Flight, a multi-year investigation led by U.S. Homeland Security Investigations targeting corruption inside Venezuela’s oil industry. Several others remain fugitives including Vuteff’s former boss, Ralph Steinmann, in a Swiss firm and one of their former clients, Raúl Gorrín, a billionaire media tycoon charged in October with ginning up a currency-exchange scheme using fake loan agreements to embezzle more than $1 billion from state-run oil company PDVSA at a time of collapsing crude production.

Gorrín was previously charged in 2018 for his alleged involvement in a separate bribery case in which he is alleged to have paid bribes including yachts, private jets and champion show-jumping horses to two former Venezuelan National Treasurers.

Now a convicted money launderer for billionaires, Vuteff came from humble beginnings, working from the age of 12 in a laundromat his family owned below the small apartment where they lived in rural Argentina.

Defense attorney Brian Bieber said Vuteff felt deep remorse for his mistakes, actively cooperated with the government’s investigation and had already paid dearly for his crimes by being unable to be at his parents’ bedsides when they died due to travel restrictions.

“I know the decision in the past were wrong and I am not trying to find excuses to justify them,” Vuteff, holding back tears, told Judge Darrin Gayles at Tuesday’s sentencing.

Prosecutors led by Assistant U.S. Attorney Nalina Sombuntham had sought a sentence of 41 months.

“I know I can never undo the harm I have caused. But I can promise you that I have used this experience in my life to change,” Vuteff added. “My only wish is to redeem myself.”

Twenty nine childhood friends, business associates and relatives of his Venezuelan wife also wrote letters to the court seeking leniency. Conspicuously absent was any letter from Vuteff’s father-in-law, Ledezma, who led massive protests against the government before being arrested in 2015 on allegations he was plotting a coup. Ledezma fled house arrest in 2017 and took up residency in Spain, where Vuteff was living prior to his arrest.

“I have learned to love Fernando like a son,” Ledezma’s wife, Victoria Capriles, told Judge Gayles at Tuesday’s sentencing. “He has earned my trust, our affection.”

As part of his plea agreement earlier this year, Vuteff agreed to forfeit over $4 million in unlawfully obtained assets, including real estate in Miami, Spain and Paraguay.

____ Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america

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