If the Venezuelan Law against corruption was enforced...
<a href=www.vheadline.com>Venezuela's Electronic News Posted: Friday, June 06, 2003 By: Gustavo Coronel
VHeadline.com commentarist Gustavo Coronel writes: It is my opinion that President Chavez and most of his team of collaborators would be behind bars. As it is, however, the team is mostly and quietly sitting at bars...
The Law was passed in March of this year and seems written for a country which does not look at all like Venezuela 2003, where ethics in public function is practically non- existent. The almost proud disdain of this government for ethical rules of the game largely explains the immense crisis we are facing.
The Law was passed in characteristic fashion. Citizens had no previous access to the project and were served with a "fait accompli." Even after its passing the law stayed in the subsurface and known onlt to the very few ... it took me about one month to track it down at www.asambleanacional.gov.ve
Having said all this, I think the law is sufficiently stringent to produce the imprisonment of most of the government team if it was enforced. This is not going to happen because the officers in charge of enforcing the law are members of the team ... and these men do not commit political suicide. They'd rather be dishonest.
The Law contains many articles which are of very general nature, so that, although anybody can see that they are being violated, their subjective nature makes it impossible to measure the violation. Article 1, for example, calls for a behavior of public officers which "will protect the public patrimony, will guarantee the transparent and efficient use of public resources, based on the principles of honesty, transparency, participation, efficiency, efficacy, legality, accountability and responsibility..."
This sounds good ... but all we can say is that the reality of Venezuela is to this article as south is to north. Chavez acts in a manner totally opposite to the letter of the article.
To prove my assertion I would have to write a book ... which I might do... In the meantime, however, I will offer some tidbits:
Article 7 reads: "The public officers will manage and protect the public patrimony with decency, decorum and honesty, in such a way that the utilization of assets and the expenditure of public resources be made in accordance with the Constitution..."
As I read this article. I could not help thinking of the 53,000 barrels per day we send to Cuba, under terms which are clearly unconstitutional, as the agreement was not approved by the National Assembly; and highly inefficient and damaging to the national treasury since it involves a huge subsidy of about $1 billion from the poor people of Venezuela to the poor people of Cuba. This is a crime that the Law defines as of lese fatherland ("lesa patria").
Article 8 stipulates that all information about the management of public funds will be made public.
Article 9 dictates that public administrators will keep citizens informed of the way they manage the assets and monies entrusted to them, information that should be published quarterly in a simple and understandable manner.
Article 10 says that all citizens have the right to request this information and receive it promptly. All of this is science fiction under this government and anyone going to a government agency asking for this will be lucky to leave in one piece.
Article 11 establishes that the project of national budget should be consulted with public opinion before going to the National Assembly. This has never been done, although the stipulation already existed in the Law of Public Administration.
Article 13 reads that "public officers are at the service of the State and not at the service of political or economic groups." But Chavez is also the president of MVR, the political party which supports him, while the Bolivarian Circles, the armed groups of the government have their headquarters at the Presidential Palace.
Article 41 says that the General Comptroller will investigate all public officers which contract with the State through companies in which they own shares. General Baduel, one of the military members of the team own or did own shares of a radio station which contracted government advertisement. Although he publicly admitted this, he was never bothered by his friend the Comptroller.
Article 46 defines as illicit enrichment any patrimonial size out of proportion with the income of the public officer. The burden of the proof is on the public employee. And yet the majority of these men and women are clearly living beyond their means, buying real state in Venezuela, Chile and the US that could not be bought on the basis of their salaries. Former Minister Rodriguez Chacin, who reported assets of Bs.70 million as he entered his job, bought a 2,000 acre ranch for Bs.400 million, although real estate experts say that the property is worth more than Bs.1 billion.
Articles 56 and 57 establish prison terms of 6 months to 4 years for any public officer who applies public funds to any other objective than that originally established by law. On the basis of these articles, President Chavez and his then Minister of Finance, Nelson Merentes, should be behind bars. They diverted, illegally and openly, some $4 billion from the Macroeconomic Stabilization Fund to other purposes, largely still unaccounted for. This is the worst case of mismanagement of public funds I have ever seen. The employees Chavez and Merentes were duly denounced ... to no avail.
Article 58 states that "any officer who claims an emergency situation to eliminate the bidding process to acquire public goods and services will be sent to prison for 6 months to 3 years." Yet, a recent Presidential decree collides head on with this law, allowing all government agencies to dispense with bidding procedures due to reasons of exception or emergency. This conflict borders on insanity since the man who guided the law and the man who produced the decree are one and the same. I am reminded of the man who tells a friend: "I thought I had a problem of split personalities, but now I think we are OK"....
Article 66 deals with the utilization of confidential official information for personal gain, a crime punished with prison of 1-6 years and a fine of up to 50% of the benefits obtained (why only 50%?). Economist Orlando Ochoa, highly respected in our economic sector, has just denounced Minister of Finance Tobias Nobrega for this kind of manipulation in connection with external debt bonds. Ochoa also mentioned in a TV program ("Primera Pagina") that the money that should flow from the Ministry of Finance to the regional governments falls in the hands of intermediaries who give less than the amount to financially starved regional entities and pocket the rest. This is a dirty trick used in Venezuela by all dictators since the Monagas brothers were in power in the 1850s. If you wanted to collect a government debt you had to talk to Mrs. Monagas who charged a modest 10% commission.
Articles 70-75 deal with extortion while article 79 deals with influence peddling. Plenty of examples of that among the lesser revolutionaries.
Article 81 establishes prison terms of 1-5 years for anyone opening a personal bank account with public monies. This was standard practice among the military during the brief but intense disaster of the Bolivar 2000 program (see the book of Agustin Beroes: "Corruption in the times of Chavez").
These are only a few examples of the ethical collapse of this regime. This is twice as painful, as this government came to power on the wings of a very strong anti-corruption stance. They came to clean the house but now the house is filthier than ever before.
A final comment: Most of the provisions of this law existed already in previous instruments, such as the Law of Protection of Public Patrimony, in force since 1982.
So, not one of the dedicated defenders of the regime can come now and say that the new rules of the game could not apply retroactively.
This would be such an impudent and cynical defense that I doubt that anyone would dare to use it.
Gustavo Coronel is the founder and president of Agrupacion Pro Calidad de Vida (The Pro-Quality of Life Alliance), a Caracas-based organization devoted to fighting corruption and the promotion of civic education in Latin America, primarily Venezuela. A member of the first board of directors (1975-1979) of Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), following nationalization of Venezuela's oil industry, Coronel has worked in the oil industry for 28 years in the United States, Holland, Indonesia, Algiers and in Venezuela. He is a Distinguished alumnus of the University of Tulsa (USA) where he was a Trustee from 1987 to 1999. Coronel led the Hydrocarbons Division of the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) in Washington DC for 5 years. The author of three books and many articles on Venezuela ("Curbing Corruption in Venezuela." Journal of Democracy, Vol. 7, No. 3, July, 1996, pp. 157-163), he is a fellow of Harvard University and a member of the Harvard faculty from 1981 to 1983. In 1998, he was presidential election campaign manager for Henrique Salas Romer and now lives in retirement on the Caribbean island of Margarita where he runs a leading Hotel-Resort. You may contact Gustavo Coronel at email gustavo@vheadline.com