A report revealed that Venezuelan opposition figure Juan Guaidó spends more than US$9,000 a day on his activities and, in two years, distributed millions among a team of 100 officials and 6,000 militants.
In addition to donations from the US and Europe, Guaidó finances himself by seizing Venezuelan government assets abroad.
Since 2019, when former opposition deputy Juan Guaidó decided to self-proclaim himself as president in charge of Venezuela, Venezuelans have paid more than US$34,000 per month to support a government structure of about 100 people.
The figure is part of a report revealed by Eduardo Semtei, leader of the Avanzada Progresista party, a political formation opposed to the government of Nicolás Maduro but which has denounced the indiscriminate use of Venezuelan funds abroad appropriated by Guaidó and his ‘parallel’ government.
Data released by Avanzada Progresista show that, in the last 24 months, the parallel structure set up by Guaidó consumed a total expenditure of US$828,480.
The amount was destined to maintain a team of approximately 100 people, including lawyers, bodyguards, secretaries, communicators, social network administrators, and even “independent journalists.”
The figures show an average of US$1,134 per day for Guaidó’s team.
But those expenses remain small compared to those destined exclusively to the movements of Guaidó and his closest entourage.
Data released by Avanzada Progresista indicate that since the beginning of his operation against Maduro, Guaidó has spent $6.6 million on his inner circle.
Guaidó allocates an average of US$278,138 per month, or US$9,144 per day, to expenses “entirely destined to activities of Guaidó and his closest circle and for discreet and personal use.”
Guaidó’s apparatus also distributes money to pay some 6,000 militants of the so-called ‘G4’, the four political parties still sustaining his parallel management: Primero Justicia, Acción Democrática, Un Nuevo Tiempo, and Voluntad Popular.
According to Avanzada Progresista’s report, 1,500 militants of each party received “between a minimum of US$50 and a maximum of US$350 per month” during the last 24 months.
The payments total an expense of US$23.8 million in the last 24 months, an average of almost one million dollars per month.
Meanwhile, the government’s National Assembly, a sort of legislature in contempt set up by Guaidó, has spent an average of US$859,900 per month or US$28,270 per day on its operation.
In the last 24 months, that parallel body consumed US$20.6 million.
The data presented by Semtei arise, as he explained, from the own figures disclosed by the ‘Central Bank of Venezuela – Ad Hoc Administrative Board’, a parallel central bank also set up by Guaidó to identify and appropriate the financial assets that Venezuela has abroad.
The apparatus set up by Guaidó has as its primary source of financing Venezuela’s assets abroad, which the apparatus of the former opposition deputy considers “recovered assets”.
According to the website of the supposed Central Bank controlled by Guaidó, the maneuver “recovered” US$347 billion from accounts in Citibank in New York and maintained in the “recovery process” US$1.9 billion in London banks, among them the 32 tons of gold appropriated with the endorsement of the British government.
But these were not Guaidó’s only sources of financing.
According to a journalistic report consigned by the Venezuelan National Assembly, the opposition received, between 2020 and 2021, a total of US$841 million for “humanitarian assistance”, coming mainly from the US, the European Union, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and USAID, the US agency for the distribution of financial assistance abroad.
With information from Sputnik