CARACAS (Dispatches) – A court in Venezuela has upheld long prison sentences for six American oil executives detained in the South American country on corruption charges for more than four years.
Venezuela’s supreme court announced the ruling late Friday.
The men known as the Citgo 6 — for the Houston oil company where they worked — travelled to Caracas around Thanksgiving in 2017 to attend a meeting at the headquarters of Citgo’s parent, state-run oil giant PDVSA and were arrested by security officers at the conference room where they were gathered. Later they were charged with corruption in connection to a plan to refinance billions in bonds.
The court confirmed the sentence of former Citgo president Jose Pereira, who has been convicted of embezzlement, at 13 years and seven months. He also has to pay a fine of $2 million, the court said in a press release Friday night.
It also confirmed sentences of eight years and 10 months each against the five other former executives -- Tomeu Vadell, Jorge Toledo, Gustavo Cardenas, Jose Luis Zambrano and Alirio Zambrano.
The men are being held at Helicoide jail in Caracas alongside other major U.S.-backed opposition figures.
The development came as Venezuelans marked the 30th anniversary of the “Bolivarian Revolution” in 1992 that forged the prominent standing of Hugo Chavez in the Central American nation.
President Nicolas Maduro led military honors for the late leader and all those who steadfastly stood behind him during what is also known as a “day of dignity”.
“Thirty years of a historic deed of great, hard and complex battles but I can say 30 years later, to the immortal spirit of Commander Chavez, 30 years later here is the victorious Bolivarian people of Venezuela in permanent advance, in permanent Revolution, in permanent rebellion,” Maduro stated in televised remarks.
“Chavez rebelled against the dominant system, the oligarchy and imperialism,” he said, referring to the U.S.-backed dictatorship at the time.
The “Bolivarian Revolution” was the culmination of a period of social unrest, triggered by growing dissatisfaction with a corrupt political elite mapped out by the U.S.- and European-administered International Monetary Fund.