Samark López, the favored seller of Chavismo

Samark López, the favored seller of Chavismo:- 

The inclusion of the Venezuelan businessman on the U.S. list of drug traffickers and money launderers exposes the extent of his dealings with the Nicolás Maduro regime: first, he sold kits for government housing construction programs, then he profited from the mass sale of food and even Christmas decorations. All of this was done through a structure that, until now, has found refuge in Barbados; the small Caribbean island serves as a haven, hiding some of his assets from the U.S. Treasury Department.

He is no longer anonymous. Samark José López Bello ceased being an unknown figure amassing wealth and making deals days ago. The sanctions imposed by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the Treasury Department on February 13, 2017, directly identify him as the  frontman  or straw man for the Vice President of the Republic, Tareck El Aissami, and link him to drug trafficking. López Bello has become a public figure for Venezuelans, who, unknowingly, have displayed Christmas trees in their homes that the businessman sold through the government.

Yes. The man whose 13 properties in various jurisdictions around the world have just been frozen by US authorities, and whom they accuse of being a "financial supporter" and of "acting on behalf of" El Aissami, negotiated Christmas trees in November with the government of Nicolás Maduro, who frequently complains about the lack of dollars in the public coffers after the fall in oil revenues.

On November 19, a ship docked at the port of Puerto Cabello—the country's main terminal, located in Carabobo state—carrying the December shipment. The pine trees were dispatched by Postar Intertrade Limited for the state-owned Venezuelan Foreign Trade Corporation (Corpovex), a state-owned company responsible for centralizing public procurement and which, since its creation in 2013, has been headed by Giuseppe Yoffredda, a Major General in the Venezuelan Air Force.

Port records reveal that the Christmas trees, which arrived from the port of Philadelphia in the United States, weighed nearly 58 tons. Corpovex does not publish or disseminate information about its purchases, but anyone who traces Postar Intertrade Limited will eventually encounter the now infamous Samark López.

On the  website  where Samark López responded to OFAC, admitting that he “has known Tareck El Aissami for several years” and denying any “involvement in drug trafficking,” the businessman mentions that in addition to Profit Corporation and Yakima Trading Corporation—included on the list of 13 assets blocked by the Treasury Department—Postar Intertrade Limited also belongs to him. “Founded in 2013, Postar has a modern warehouse the size of three soccer fields where trucks line up for national distribution. Today, Postar employs 3,000 people and leads the way as a model of success in Venezuelan private enterprise.” The website also specifies that the company supplies construction materials for social housing.

The website for Postar Intertrade Limited offers a different perspective: “We specialize in  bulk commodity trading  and add value through our portfolio of logistics and management services.” The contact information includes little more than a reference to a New York office, an email address, and a phone number.

Samark López is not listed in the company's records. That may be why Postar Intertrade Limited did not appear on the OFAC list released on Monday, February 13. But the people and addresses associated with Postar Intertrade Limited lead to the man the U.S. government presented to the world as a front man for the Vice President of Venezuela and former Governor of Aragua state.

Without documents

Postar Intertrade Limited has no registered address in Venezuela, nor is it registered with the National Registry of Contractors (RNC), a fundamental requirement for doing business with the government. To find a Postar Intertrade Limited office, one must travel to The Phoenix Center on the Caribbean island of Barbados. This is evident from some of the cargo manifests for its shipments to Corpovex.

The connection to Samark López is demonstrated in several ways. That address is also the one the businessman used to move his company, Yakima Trading Corporation, from Panama, where it was founded in 2002, to Barbados in early 2016.

Shipping documents identify Amaury Salazar as the head of Postar Intertrade Limited. This is Amaury José Salazar Gibory, an employee of Profit Corporation, the business hub through which Samark López secured numerous contracts with the state-owned oil company Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA). When López acquired controlling stakes in PDVSA (starting in 2010), he incorporated it into the "Social Production Enterprises (EPS) program" of the oil company and its subsidiaries, a program conceived by the government of Hugo Chávez. The Venezuelan Institute of Social Security (IVSS) reveals that Amaury Salazar joined Profit Corporation, now under investigation by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), on September 1, 2010.

Amaury Salazar is a relative of Armando José Salazar Gibory, who was once a partner of Samark López in Profit Corporation and has also worked at the company since May 1, 2010. The National Registry of Contractors (RNC) record indicates that Armando Salazar still serves as “director” of the company, located in the exclusive JWM Tower, in the El Rosal Urbanization, Caracas, where this week the press unsuccessfully sought answers from those responsible for the sanctioned companies.

An additional piece of evidence proves the link between Samark López and Postar Intertrade Limited, the Christmas tree vendor. The address of a company owned by Amaury Salazar in Caracas, called Distribuidora Amaury and barred from contracting with the state, is the same address used by Grupo Sahect, CA, the company with which Samark López began his food business years ago and which was linked to the “Pudreval” case, in which thousands of tons of food imported by the state spoiled. Today, Grupo Sahect is among López's assets considered suspicious by the U.S. Treasury Department.

That Postar Intertrade Limited is domiciled in Barbados is no coincidence. The organizational chart of properties that the Treasury Department attributes to Samark López includes companies in Venezuela, the United States, Panama, the British Virgin Islands, and the United Kingdom, but none in Barbados. “It is a reputable jurisdiction, with predictable jurisprudence, and a legal structure inspired by the English common law system,” explains Hernando Díaz-Candia, a lawyer specializing in international arbitration and investment protection.

Precisely because of these characteristics, Barbados' jurisdiction offers numerous advantages to entrepreneurs like Samark López. "Barbados is the best of both worlds: it's a clean, serious jurisdiction, it's not expensive, and its British influence allows for the use of  trusts , which provide a kind of legal anonymity," notes a source who prefers to remain anonymous.

The island-state is also not considered a “tax haven” by the Seniat, the Venezuelan tax authority, because it has a “treaty to avoid double taxation on income tax in Venezuela”, and signed a “bilateral treaty for the promotion and protection of investments”, which would allow investors to initiate arbitrations against Venezuela in case the Government engages in “uncompensated” expropriation processes.

“He is obviously very well advised,” the source concludes, regarding the address of Postar Intertrade Limited and the move from Panama to Barbados that Samark López made last year with his company Yakima Trading Corporation, when the storm of the  Panama Papers was approaching the isthmus , the journalistic investigation based on the leak of millions of documents from the Mossack Fonseca law firm.

Today Barbados is cleaner than Panama. In the United States, they give a Panamanian company more trouble than a Barbadian company if it wants to open accounts in American banks,” the source insists.

A businessman, who also wished to remain anonymous, recalled that years ago Yakima Trading Corporation was implicated in a case involving the importation of contaminated milk from China, which also involved Samark López. If López is not listed in the records of Postar Intertrade Limited, he could avoid a similar incident.

Business comes in boxes

The Postar Intertrade Limited deal with Corpovex is more than just a Christmas tree ornament. Coincidentally, when the U.S. government's indictment against Tareck El Aissami and Samark López was issued from Washington, a ship carrying tons of food had just been unloaded at the port of Puerto Cabello. The common thread in both stories, which unfolded on February 13, is Postar Intertrade Limited. While the U.S. Treasury Department was announcing the seizure of dozens of Samark López's assets and companies, the businessman was starting another deal with the Venezuelan government in Venezuelan waters.

If the noise came from the US capital during these wintry days, from the ship San Antonio, coming from the Mexican port of Veracruz –docked since February 10 in the warm Puerto Cabello–, hundreds of the longed-for boxes of food that the Government sells through the Local Committees for Supply and Production (CLAP) were unloaded, an emergency plan that began to take shape since the end of 2015 to face the generalized shortage of basic products.

“A total of 633 containers with food kits destined for the CLAP program were unloaded from the vessel San Antonio at dock 24 in Puerto Cabello,” reported the state-owned Bolivarian Ports Authority (Bolipuertos) on February 11. The 11,600 tons of boxes were shipped by Postar Intertrade Limited, received by the also state-owned Agricultural Supply and Services Corporation (CASA)—attached to the office of the Minister of Food, General Rodolfo Marco Torres—and paid for by Corpovex. Some sources indicate that this shipment is “marginal” compared to the volumes of bulk food that Samark López and his companies also sell to CASA.

A few months passed between the food bag format and the box presentation. In July 2016, the then Vice President for Economic Affairs, Miguel Pérez Abad, traveled to Panama, accompanied by the president of Corpovex, Giuseppe Yoffreda, to negotiate the purchase of products from Panamanian businesses. It was during this visit that the decision was made to switch from the flimsy bags to boxed presentations, in the form of kits or combos that included the same products in a specific order.

Following that trip by Venezuelan officials, the government imported food boxes for the CLAP program from Panama, but those recently shipped by Postar Intertrade Limited to Corpovex were prepared in Mexico and departed from the port of Veracruz. “Postar Intertrade Limited buys from a Mexican company that assembles the boxes, and Postar Intertrade Limited has the contract with Corpovex for the sale,” says a source familiar with the business.

For Samark López and Postar Intertrade Limited, the business of selling prefabricated housing units is nothing new. In 2015, they sold hundreds of kits containing parts for building prefabricated houses to the Venezuelan government as part of the so-called Housing Mission, one of the flagship programs of the Chavista government. Port records from Puerto Cabello show that in June 2015, Postar Intertrade Limited shipped approximately 200 tons of “prefabricated construction” materials from the Port of Everglades, Miami, to the National Fund for Popular Power Service (Safonapp), attached to the Ministry of Communes and Social Movements. Sources admit that it is possible that this shipment was also paid for by Corpovex, the company that centralizes public purchases using preferential dollars.

The prefabricated housing business appears to be the origin of Postar Intertrade Limited. The website Samark López has used to promote himself as a philanthropist and defend himself against the OFAC accusation states that “Postar developed a logistics system designed to provide access to decent housing for people living in poverty. Postar acquires construction materials and ships them to Venezuela in housing kits containing approximately 160 items.” A Venezuelan government plan tailored to Samark López and Postar Intertrade Limited.

A promotional video circulating online shows the box assembly process. Postar Intertrade Limited purchased the merchandise from Home Depot and Graybar, which it then shipped to Venezuela in boxes for Construpatria, a state-run network for selling construction materials under the Ministry of Housing. “Since the material goes all over Venezuela, we take care to distribute the weight between two boxes, box A and box B, because when it arrives in Venezuela, it reaches places where there are no forklifts (…) This wouldn't just apply to Venezuela, but to any country in Latin America,” explains María Eugenia Rodríguez, project manager for Postar Intertrade Limited, in the video.

Nobody defends him

Following the Treasury Department's accusations, the government closed ranks with Vice President Tareck El Aissami. But neither El Aissami, nor any other official, nor the Public Prosecutor's Office has commented on Samark López and the extensive network of companies and properties he rapidly built amidst strict currency controls in place since 2003. Over these years, dozens of national and transnational companies have closed their doors, dragged down by the economic crisis that has gripped the country for the past three years.

Only Samark López has admitted his relationship with Tareck El Aissami, who is likely not his only acquaintance in high-ranking government positions. Thanks to Postar Intertrade Limited, he has evaded the reach of the Treasury Department and negotiated with Corpovex, CASA, and Construpatria, among other state-owned companies. However, through his companies based in Venezuela and now sanctioned by the OFAC, he secured contracts with PDVSA, Sidor, the Ministry of Electric Power during the electricity crisis between 2008 and 2011, and even with the Ministry of Communication and Information, among other high-level government agencies.

These were deals that allowed him to build an empire in just a few years, but which began to crumble within hours when US authorities released his business profile to the world. From that moment on, it seems that Samark López and his fortune are left with only a corner of the Caribbean called Barbados.

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