The following is an exclusive English translation from Spain's leading daily newspaper, El País.
The case of the banker Eligio Cedeño reveals the growing similarities between Chávez's Venezuela and Putin's Russia
El País - W. Oppenheimer, London, Feb. 2, 2009
Eligio Cedeño, 44 years old, is a self-made man who first began to earn money as a financial intermediary in Caracas and ended up building a small banking empire in chavista Venezuela. But now he has spent two years in jail awaiting a judgment for a strange foreign exchange issue that his lawyers say is a baseless accusation.
Why? Because the banker began to flirt with the opposition to President Hugo Chávez and "could become a dangerous political rival: a young, handsome, wealthy, and popular man," says Robert Amsterdam, one of his lawyers. "Chávez and his people believe that Cedeño made his money thanks to their regime and that he would have to be on their side," he added.
Amsterdam became famous for a very similar case: the trial against Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the Russian oligarch who refused to bow his head before then President Vladimir Putin and was sentenced to nine years in a prison which is cast away in Siberia. Now he has joined the lawyers Emilio Berrizbeitia and Gonzalo Himiob for the defense of Cedeño.
"There are numerous similarities arising between what is occurring in Russia and what is happening in Venezuela," Amsterdam explains in London. "It is different, because Chávez and Putin are two very different people, but with enormous similarities: the way in which they exercise control over the courts, the attacks on the media, the attacks on the NGOs, and the repression of potential sources of opposition. And one of the most important cases is that of Cedeño, because the reason behind the charges against him is his support for opposition parties, and in particular, for individuals whom he helped to leave the country before they were arrested," he explains.
Berrizbeitia says that he has not been able to gain access to the trial against Cedeño, and that he was not allowed to introduce evidence proving his innocence. The case began to be heard last summer, but when the accusations against the banker began to collapse, the prosecutor's office recused the judge for the third time in order to prompt the suspension of the trial and avoid the acquittal of Cedeño. The banker has been held since February 8, 2007, and has been forced to sell his assets and he should be released after completing two years of pre-trial detention. But the prosecutors have demanded that he continue to be imprisoned without any explanation why.
Amsterdam believes that the Cedeño case is proof that in Venezuela there is "democracy without rule of law" - another similarity with Russia - and that the rapprochement experienced between the two countries is not accidental nor fleeting, but rather "a geostrategic decision by the Kremlin" which shows that Russia understands better than the United States and Europe the importance of Latin America.
As evidence for this, he cites the spectacular growth of the arms trade between both countries - including Kalashnikovs to arm the Bolivarian Guard, created to crush any civil uprising, the constant visits of the Russian Vice Prime Minister Igor Sechin to Caracas (three in the past four months), and the turn of Chávez's energy policy to favor Russian gas and oil companies. It is a plan that, in his opinion, includes the Kremlin's aspirations to create an OPEC for gas.
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