Wall Street Journal 

Mary A. O’Grady 

Dec. 27, 2020  

Six Venezuelan-born Citgo executives were living and working in the U.S. in mid-November 2017 when they were summoned by Citgo parent PdVSA—the Venezuelan state-owned oil monopoly—to Caracas for a meeting.  

The five naturalized U.S. citizens and one U.S. permanent resident were in good standing with the Houston-based firm. As they boarded the corporate jet, they couldn’t have known that they were headed for prison.  

As the team convened in a PdVSA boardroom on Nov. 21, 2017, Venezuelan military intelligence swooped in to arrest them. They were charged with embezzlement, though the debt deal they supposedly cooked up to benefit themselves never happened. Last month, after a closed-door trial, they were declared guilty. Their sentences range from eight to 13 years. Appeals are expected.  

Whether the six overstepped their authority at Citgo isn’t clear. But there is no doubt they were denied due process in Venezuela and are pawns in a wider power struggle. On one side of the chess board is strongman Nicolás Maduro. On the other is former oil minister and former PdVSA president Rafael Ramírez, now wanted on graft charges. In July Venezuela requested Mr. Ramírez’s extradition from Italy, though according to press reports his whereabouts are unknown.  

Meanwhile, discrediting the apparatus he built during 12 years at the helm of Venezuelan oil policy is a Maduro priority, which likely explains the hauling in of the Citgo Six. Since the men were also working for a U.S.-based company now controlled by Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó —recognized by more than 50 democracies as the country’s rightful president—their arrest is also a way for Mr. Maduro to show he can still influence Citgo’s fate.  

Mr. Ramírez was a close ally of Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chávez, who in 2002 handpicked him to be minister of energy and two years later made him, concurrently, PdVSA president. During his 12 years as the country’s petroleum czar, Mr. Ramírez shaped an oil policy designed to drive Chávez’s consolidation of power. Under his leadership, regime critics inside PdVSA and most foreign investors were eliminated. Soaring oil revenues were used to enrich Chávez loyalists, feed populism and buy off opponents. 

The politicization and corruption of PdVSA had starved the operation of both financial and human capital. Nevertheless, as long as crude prices held up, the regime partied on, treating the company as its honey pot.  

When Chávez died in 2013, Mr. Maduro, who had been second in command, was elevated to regime strongman. A year later the oil boom began to go bust, with prices plummeting by half between June and December 2014. Output was also falling at the grossly mismanaged PdVSA. A squeeze on revenues ensued. Shortly thereafter serious warring between regime factions broke out. 

In September 2014 Mr. Ramírez was demoted to foreign minister. A few months later he was reassigned as Venezuela’s ambassador to the United Nations.  

By 2017, with Venezuelan poverty spiking, Mr. Ramírez was openly criticizing his government’s handling of the economy and the oil industry from his perch in New York. Worries reportedly circulated among Maduro henchmen that he might challenge their boss in a presidential election scheduled for 2018. On Nov. 29, 2017, Reuters reported that Mr. Ramírez had been abruptly removed from his U.N. job, though he didn’t acknowledge the firing until six days later.  

Mr. Ramírez had reportedly been instructed to return to Venezuela. If so, he did not comply with the order, in part perhaps because it was already clear that the regime was developing a narrative that would place the blame for Venezuela’s economic collapse on corruption and that he was going to play a leading role.  

If the luring of the Citgo Six wasn’t enough warning, the Nov. 30, 2017, detention of former Citgo president Nelson Martínez and of former oil minister Eulogio del Pino drove home the point.  

Martínez was no longer at Citgo because he had been made oil minister in January 2017 and later that year also was named president of PdVSA. Although he had a serious heart condition, the regime refused him house arrest while he awaited trial. He died in prison in 2018. Mr. del Pino, a PdVSA insider since 2005, was oil minister from 2015-17.  

According to the regime, in a span of some three months in 2017 it arrested 65 oil executives and officials as part of its giant corruption probe. Yet its commitment to cleaning things up is hard to take seriously. In October it passed a new law to give Mr. Maduro extraordinary new power to sign oil contracts. More sleazy deals to follow. 

The Citgo Six may be destined to become mere footnotes in an old-fashioned purge. But an attempt to use the Americans as bargaining chips in future negotiations with the Biden administration cannot be ruled out.