An internal report by the Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA revealed that shell companies linked to Nicolás Maduro's environment diverted at least $11 billion in oil revenues between 2021 and 2022, in what appears to be one of the country's biggest recent financial scandals.
According to the documentation, the companies involved exported large volumes of crude oil without the state company receiving the corresponding payments, which meant a million-dollar loss for the public coffers.
The scheme would have been coordinated by businessmen close to power, with a central role attributed to Carlos Malpica Flores, a former key official in the government's financial area and with privileged access to oil operations.
Records indicate that these operations were carried out through contracts assigned to shell companies, which operated outside official marketing channels. As a result, the oil was sold in international markets without the revenues entering PDVSA
.The economic impact is significant. According to data from the Central Bank of Venezuela cited in the investigation, the amount diverted represents approximately half of the country's oil revenues in that period, which shows the magnitude of the scheme
