Venezuela’s ex-oil minister arrested for alleged ties to US

Pedro Tellechea, Venezuela’s former oil minister, had resigned just days before prosecutors announced his arrest.

A former Venezuelan oil minister with alleged ties to a United States intelligence-run firm has been arrested, days after he resigned.

Pedro Tellechea, Venezuela’s onetime petroleum minister and a former state oil executive, was taken into custody on Sunday, the AFP news agency reported. Details of his arrest were announced on Monday.

Tellechea and his co-conspirators are accused of facilitating the illegal “delivery of an automated control system” to a company controlled by the US intelligence services” through Petroleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA), the state-controlled oil company he operated, Attorney General Tarek William Saab said in a statement.

Saab stated that Telelchea had violated “national sovereignty” by handing “the brain of PDVSA” over to the unnamed firm. Tellechea’s “closest collaborators” were also seized by authorities. They were not named by prosecutors.

The arrest of Tellechea, a former army colonel who served as oil minister for a few months, comes fresh on the heels of his abrupt resignation last week. On Friday, in a post on social media, he relinquished his post, citing “health problems that require my immediate attention”.

People carry Venezuela’s national flag to protest the election results that awarded Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro a third term, in Maracaibo, Venezuela, on July 30, 2024 [Isaac Urrutia/Reuters]

He had been appointed petroleum minister in March 2023, but was later moved from the oil ministry to the industry ministry as part of President Nicolas Maduro’s sprawling cabinet re-shuffling in August after the embattled president’s contested election victory. Tellechea was appointed head of PDVSA in January 2023, the Reuters news agency reported.

More than 2,400 people were arrested and at least 27 people were killed in Venezuela after protests engulfed the country accusing Maduro of voter fraud.

Tellechea’s arrest is the latest scandal to rock the country’s troubled energy sector, which has been reeling in recent months and years from a flurry of criminal prosecutions of top oil managers and senior officials.

Venezuela’s petroleum minister, Tareck El Aissami, resigned last year after authorities detained six high-level officials linked to a corruption probe into PDVSA. El Aissami was also subsequently detained.

The crackdown ultimately led to the arrest of at least 21 businesspeople and senior officials related to the vanishing of proceeds of oil shipments, totalling more than $20bn, The Associated Press news agency reported.

Venezuela”s Vice President Tareck El Aissami attends the swearing-in ceremony of the new board of directors of Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA in Caracas, Venezuela January 31, 2017 [Marco Bello/Reuters]

In 2023, Saab said his office announced it had probed 27 “corruption schemes” in PDVSA since 2017, which he noted had resulted in more than 200 arrests, including the detention of some of the country’s top oil executives.

Eulogio del Pino and Nelson Martinez, two other former petroleum ministers, also previously faced corruption charges in Venezuela. Martinez later died in prison. Rafael Ramirez, another ex-oil minister who held the post from 2002 to 2014, is also wanted by Venezuelan authorities and is currently at large, hiding out in Italy. Italy has not granted Venezuela’s extradition request.

Venezuela, which boasts the world’s largest known oil reserves, once produced in excess of three million barrels of oil per day. Output has since plummeted to less than one million barrels amid political tensions, sanctions, and severe mismanagement.

The US has given oil giants like Chevron and Repsol the green light to keep a foothold in the country by applying for independent licences.

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Al Jazeera and news agencies