<a href=www.vheadline.com>Venezuela's Electronic News Posted: Thursday, April 17, 2003 By: Patrick J. O'Donoghue

Venezuela has been chosen as Latin American & Caribbean representative on the United Nations (UN) Disarmament Commission Bureau for 2003-2004. A statement from the Venezuelan Foreign Office highlights claims that Venezuela has obtained leadership in the commission over the years for its work on disarmament in general and efforts to seek ways of promoting peace in world.

Venezuela has appointed a member of its United Nations delegation, Mary Cedeño to assume the presidency of the bureau after she received majority support from other bureau members.

• Taking up office, Cedeño will chair the Disarmament Commission, which ends this week. 

The aim of the Commission is "to study the importance of nuclear disarmament for international peace, security and stability and to propose initiatives to establish principles and multilateral norms of disarmament."

Forums

Referendum 2003 discuss the pros and cons of a revocatory referendum

President Hugo Chavez Frias express your opinions on the Presidency of Hugo Chavez Frias and his Bolivarian Revolution

Bolivarian Circles Are Bolivarian Circles a Venezuelan form of Neighborhood Watch Committees or violent hordes of pro-Chavez thugs?

Venezuela's Opposition What is it? Is a force to be reckoned with or in complete disarray?

Our editorial statement reads: VHeadline.com Venezuela is a wholly independent e-publication promoting democracy in its fullest expression and the inalienable  right of all Venezuelans to self-determination and the pursuit of sovereign independence without interference. We seek to shed light on nefarious practices and the corruption which for decades has strangled this South American nation's development and progress. Our declared editorial bias is pro-democracy and pro-Venezuela ... which some may wrongly interpret as anti-American. --  Roy S. Carson, Editor/Publisher  Editor@VHeadline.com  

Friday 11.04.2003, CET 05:42 <a href=www.swissinfo.org>swissinfo April 9, 2003 8:05 PM   Ahmad Chalabi is widely expected to lead a post-war Iraq (Keystone Archive)

The chief of the Iraqi National Congress, Ahmad Chalabi, has been billed as Washington’s favourite to head a post-Saddam administration.   But his past is clouded by unsavoury financial dealings in Switzerland.

In Brief

Chalabi ran the Geneva branch of the Lebanese bank, Mebco, which was shut down by the Swiss Federal Banking Commission in 1989, due to liquidity and lax accounting.

Another Geneva-based business owned by the Chalabis, Socofi, ran into financial difficulty, allegedly ruining thousands of investors and leaving a SFr140 million ($101 million) hole.

Two of Ahmad's brothers were found guilty of falsifying documents at Socofi.

Ahmad himself has been sentenced to 22 years imprisonment in Jordan for his involvement in the downfall of Petra bank, which has connections with both Mebco and Socofi.

Socofi is also believed to have paid SFr88 million of non-guaranteed funds over a five-year period into companies owned by the family.

On Wednesday, Saddam Hussein's government lost control of Baghdad, after the Iraqi capital fell to United States-led forces. Chalabi ran the Geneva branch of the Lebanese bank, Mebco, which was shut down by the Swiss Federal Banking Commission in 1989.

Mebco is part of the Middle East Banking Corporation of Beirut, which is owned by the Chalabi family.

It was one of only three financial establishments in Switzerland authorised to issue Visa credit cards.

Although there is no record of illegal dealings by the bank, the commission said Mebco was badly run, with liquidity problems and lax accounting procedures. The company is also suspected of handing out unsecured credit.  

Suspect dealings   Several months after Mebco was shut down, another Geneva-based business owned by the Chalabis ran into financial difficulties.

Wednesday’s edition of “Le Temps” newspaper said that Socofi’s downfall is estimated to have ruined thousands of investors and left a SFr140 million ($101 million) hole.

The Chalabi family blamed the first Gulf War as the reason for Socofi’s financial difficulties.

But in September 2000, two of Ahmad Chalabi’s brothers were sentenced to six months in prison in Switzerland for falsifying documents in relation to dealings at Socofi.

Ahmad himself has been sentenced to 22 years in prison in Jordan for his involvement in the downfall of Petra bank, which has connections with both Mebco and Socofi.  

Family affair   The Chalabi family has also come under fire for allegedly using their financial establishments to lend money to their own companies.

Le Temps said Socofi is believed to have paid SFr88 million of non-guaranteed funds over a five-year period into companies owned by the family.

According to the Chalabi family, all the problems encountered by their companies were due to pressure from Saddam Hussein’s regime. swissinfo, Ian Hamel (translation: Joanne Shields)

RELATED ITEMS

Switzerland tightens grip on Iraqi assets UBS to hand over frozen Iraqi money  

<a href=www.vheadline.com>Venezuela's Electronic News Posted: Wednesday, April 02, 2003 By: Robert Rudnicki

Venezuela's Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose by only 0.8% in March, compared with 5.5% in February, the lowest rise since 2001.

The small increase was largely due to maximum price controls imposed by the government on a wide variety of basic goods, as officials sought to fight off the effects of spiraling inflation brought about by serious economic woes and the two month long opposition work stoppage which cost the nation's economy over $6 billion.

According to Central Bank of Venezuela (BCV) figures, the price of goods coming under maximum price controls actually fell by an average of 1.5%, compared to February's rise of 3.4%, while goods not covered by the controls rose by an average of 3.9%, well below February climb of 8.1%. March's increase takes the cumulative total for the year up to 9.4%.

Source

Consumer prices rose 0.8 percent in March, compared with a 5.5 percent increase in February, the central bank said. The trailing 12-month inflation rate fell to 34 percent from 39 percent.

Last Updated:  Tuesday, 1 April, 2003, 09:44 GMT 10:44 UK
Nick Higham BBC media correspondent

Imagine a world in which Tony Blair hosts a television programme called Hello, Prime Minister from locations around the country every Sunday on BBC One and on every BBC radio station.

Imagine this programme, in which he lambasts his political opponents and cries up the government's achievements for three or four hours at a time.

Imagine he also commandeers airtime on ITV and Channel 4 and Five at peaktime, sometimes two or three times a week.

And then imagine a world in which news coverage on those same commercial channels is routinely hostile to the government - while the BBC, of course, is a government mouthpiece, its programmes preceded by video vignettes in which Union Jack-waving workers and peasants march across the screen in slow motion to the accompaniment of stirring music.

It is of course unthinkable - in Britain, but not in Venezuela.

I have just returned from my first visit to Latin America, and I found it frankly staggering.

Venezuela is the most deeply polarised country I have ever been to.

Deposed

Since 1998 its president has been Hugo Chavez, a populist swept to power on a promise to do something, anything, for the two-thirds of Venezuelans living on or below the poverty line.

Last year he was briefly deposed in a coup (until the military switched sides to reinstate him).

Last December the middle classes, whose own standard of living has been plummeting, began a two-month general strike to try and unseat him.

They fear he is trying to "do a Castro" and turn Venezuela into a kind of Cuba, proudly independent and desperately poor.

The strike succeeded only in paralysing the economy, which enjoyed what the economists call "negative growth" of nine per cent last year and is predicted to shrink by a further 20% this year.

Throughout, the media have played a shamelessly partisan role.

Chavez thumps the tub every Sunday in his programme Ola! Presidente.

Economy

In the edition I saw (number 144) he was broadcasting from a new workers' housing development somewhere in the provinces, taking time out to attack the invasion of Iraq.

Venezuela, whose economy depends on oil exports, thinks America's purpose in the Gulf is to smash Opec and drive down the price of oil.

In 1998 Chavez was the first head of state to visit Saddam Hussein in Baghdad since the Gulf War.

Dr Marcel Granier, chief executive of RCTV, which along with its rival Venevision is one of Venezuela's two main commercial channels, maintains that TV coverage of the 1998 election was relatively impartial and that government spokesmen are still given airtime in his station's news programmes.

But in Granier's view the government are "a gang of felons" with little belief in democracy and the rule of law.

Given his shameless use of state TV and radio, Granier says Chavez has no right to complain if commercial TV channels are biased against him (Granier does not concede that they are, though other observers disagree).

Resents

RCTV's Todos Intimos, at 9pm each night, is currently one of the top-rating telenovelas or soap operas which dominate the ratings in Venezuela - which may be why Granier so resents what he calls Chavez's frequent "confiscation" of RCTV airtime during Todos Intimos's transmissions.

With the country's major newspapers all lined up against Chavez, the president himself feels beleaguered, railing against middle class "saboteurs" out to destroy his populist revolution.

The result: there is nowhere ordinary Venezuelans (or visiting foreign journalists, for that matter) can turn for reliable, impartial coverage of affairs.

Like most Latin American countries Venezuela's history is one of dictatorship: a lasting democracy was only established in 1958.

Civil society has had less than half a century to take root. Television's inability to stand back from the fray is a reflection of Venezuela's wider social failures: almost certainly, it is also making things worse.

To use a metaphor appropriate to a petroleum-based economy, Venezuela's broadcasters aren't pouring oil on troubled waters, they are fuelling the flames.

This column also appears in the BBC's publication Ariel.