International financial connections: How the Eurostandard Bank bankruptcy uncovered ties between Venezuela and North Macedonia

The Caracas regime claimed that a cyberattack from a southeastern European nation caused the delay in announcing the June 28 election results and their subsequent release without public records.

The narrative, which turned out to be a hoax, however had an unexpected correlation with reality: the bankruptcy of a bank in Skopje revealed the existence of a ring of companies and their Venezuelan owners, some very close to PDVSA, through whose accounts up to 110 million euros would have passed, reported by Armando.

When the Attorney General appointed by the Chavista Constituent Assembly of 2018 and recently ratified, Tarek William Saab, solemnly assured that the vote transmission system for the presidential election of July 28 had been the target of a “[ cyber ] attack carried out from North Macedonia,” few Venezuelans knew how to locate the Balkan country on a world map. Without major bilateral relations, with both nations separated by more than 8,000 kilometers and an inconsequential commercial exchange, Saab’s version, which was mocked on social networks, suggested a connection between Venezuela and North Macedonia that, in the end and in the absence of evidence, turned out to be unfounded.

But that did not mean that there was no binational connection. Although unknown until 2021, this other one was very real and is still the subject of investigation.

At the end of 2021, in Skopje, the capital of North Macedonia, the Eurostandard Bank, owned by two funds from Lugano, a city in the Italian-speaking canton of Ticino in Switzerland, filed for bankruptcy. The bankruptcy left almost 140,000 clients in ruins. 

From that financial earthquake, so distant and unnoticed by Venezuelans, unexpected clues emerged about deals with PDVSA, the state oil company that the self-proclaimed Bolivarian regime has used as a cash cow that it milked dry.

An independent audit carried out by Slovenian firm RUR Consulting to analyse the causes of the bank’s bankruptcy, published in April 2022, highlighted that Eurostandard Bank had condemned itself with its participation in an "illegal lending scheme" in which other financial institutions and Macedonian companies also participated for almost two decades. In this scheme, according to the auditors, intermediary companies served to channel loans to others that did not qualify according to banking standards to obtain them on a regular basis. The document concludes that, in the face of the non-payment of the loans granted to these foreseeably defaulting companies, the system got out of control and caused huge losses to the banks, fatally wounding Eurostandard Bank. 

Aside from these general findings, one footnote in the report caught the eye: while Eurostandard Bank was heading towards bankruptcy in the first three quarters of 2019, “Venezuelan clients” had deposited 110 million euros in the bank’s accounts, of which some 10 million were then loaned to the bank’s “most exposed clients.” 

The report does not provide further details on the matter, nor does it clarify how these transactions were related to the loan scheme or what role they played in the bank’s bankruptcy, but its author, Drago Kos, said in an interview given to the local press in 2022 that the 110 million deposited by the Venezuelans, then anonymous, seemed to have been at the time "absolutely necessary for Eurostandard Bank to remain alive." 

But now an investigation, carried out jointly by Armando.info , the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project ( OCCRP ) and the Investigative Reporting Lab ( IRL ) of North Macedonia, allows us to verify that not only eight companies represented by Venezuelan citizens were created in that country and had accounts in that bank, but that in the same period of time another three were created, also by Venezuelans and with practically the same purposes. Of the entire group, five of these Venezuelans were contractors for PDVSA, in addition to a former high-ranking official of the oil company’s board of directors, now in prison in Caracas.

Friends of oil

The names of eight companies behind the accounts flagged by auditors were leaked to the press in September 2022 by North Macedonia’s investigative authorities.

This report found that in addition to these companies, three additional companies, also with Venezuelan owners, were registered in Skopje between 2019 and 2020. Of the first eight, five registered the same address in a business centre in the city centre: Sveti Kliment Ohridski Boulevard No. 52A. The other three were established in the immediate vicinity.

Among the range of corporate purposes that companies declared to the commercial register of North Macedonia, many of them define their purposes as “consulting and financial services” or “marketing and services”. Otherwise, their files do not show anything different from the incorporation procedure. They do not even include the financial reports required by law. None of these companies had or has a digital presence. Nor a telephone number. Hardly any of them publish an email address.

The registry lists 14 different people as owners or representatives of these companies: 11 Venezuelans, two Spaniards and one Englishman. 

Among the five Venezuelans linked to the oil industry, Luis Enrique Molina Duque stands out, the former vice president of Production and Exploration of PDVSA, arrested in October of this year along with ten other executives of the state oil company, until then headed by Pedro Tellechea, also arrested . 

At the time of registering the company International Petrochemical Corporation Services in Skopje in July 2019, Molina Duque was the Director of Planning and Management of Pequiven, the PDVSA subsidiary for petrochemical products. Molina Duque registered as the “owner” of the company in North Macedonia another company of the same name registered in Hong Kong, of which he personally declared himself the owner, and which he had registered with an exotic and convenient address, a mailbox on the island of Samoa, in Polynesia in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. Molina Duque’s company in Skopje had an account at Eurostandard Bank.

Three other Skopje companies were registered that same year by as many businessmen - although two of them without Eurostandard accounts - whose Venezuelan companies have obtained, between them, almost 100 contracts from PDVSA. 

One of them is Alejandro Josué Ruiz Mazzeo, who appears as the representative in Skopje of a company called Petrovez, the namesake of a Venezuelan company of which he owns 50% of the shares and in which he is listed as a director, although without an account in Eurostandard. The Venezuelan company Petrovez obtained 40 contracts with PDVSA between 2015 and 2019, related to logistics, procurement and other services, according to data from the National Registry of Contractors (RNC). 

Gustavo Alonso Guevara Estaba, an employee of Ruiz Mazzeo at another Venezuelan company of his, Constructora Conkor CA, also registered an entity in Skopje, called Inverfinanzas, on the same day and at the same address as Petrovez in North Macedonia. Although this company (Inverfinanzas) did open an account at Eurostandard, it was not part of the group of companies initially leaked by the Macedonian authorities.

Ruiz Mazzeo is no stranger. Former Venezuelan Attorney General Luisa Ortega Díaz claimed on her YouTube channel in May 2020 that Ruiz served as a front man for Tarek William Saab, now the ruling party’s Attorney General but previously, between 2004 and 2012, governor of Anzoátegui state, a tourist, agro-industrial and oil province in the northeast of the country, where Conkor was established in 2000. According to Ortega, both of them would have benefited from dozens of contracts with PDVSA that were awarded to them without an adequate bidding process while charging inflated prices for their services. 

Ortega Díaz, who broke with Maduro’s government in 2018 and fled Venezuela to finally go into exile in Spain, said that in this way Constructora Conkor had won 59 contracts from PDVSA subsidiaries and affiliates between 2003 and 2017 and that, between these and other contracts obtained by the Petrovez company, they amassed more than 1 billion dollars in revenue.

Although there has been no independent and documented verification of Ortega Díaz’s claims, the truth is that Ruiz Mazzeo was quick to erase his digital footprint on the Internet, for which he hired the Spanish company Eliminalia .  

Ruiz Mazzeo has not been formally investigated for his companies in North Macedonia or for the accusations against Conkor. But he did face an accusation of being part of a money laundering network. It was in 2012 in the Federal Court of the Southern District of New York, together with his partner Ramón Koury Guevara. Then Ruiz Mazzeo and Koury Guevara were spared from that bitter experience after handing over $350,000 to the authorities. The investigation of the case was closed.

Briefcases of diffuse utility

Luisa Ortega Díaz’s allegations have also referred to another person with companies established in North Macedonia in connection with the late Eurostandard Bank scheme: Jesús Vidal Salazar.

Axio Financial Services was created by Fabio Ghilli, an Italian citizen with Venezuelan ID, who appointed Jorge Luis Chirinos Alvarado as the manager of the entity in Skopje. Both Ghilli and Chirinos were members of the board of directors of Guarapiche Servicios Petroleros SA, whose owner is the Venezuelan Jesús Vidal Salazar, according to the RNC. 

On her YouTube channel, the former attorney general claimed that Salazar’s construction company, Constructora Vidalsa 27, also improperly benefited from dozens of overpriced and unbidden government contracts. She accused Salazar of acting as a front man for the current Interior Minister, Diosdado Cabello, conventionally regarded as the number two in the ruling Chavista government. 

“Retired Sergeant Jesús Vidal Salazar Acevedo, through his company Constructora Vidalsa 27 CA, a company that actually belongs to Diosdado Cabello, has obtained lucrative contracts with the Venezuelan State,” Ortega Díaz said on May 20, 2020.

As in the case of Ruiz Mazzeo, to support the complaint Ortega showed some documents whose veracity has not been able to be independently confirmed. 

Ghilli’s connection with Salazar Acevedo, and also with Pdvsa, goes beyond his brief internship as one of the directors of Guarapiche Servicios Petroleros. In 2018, Ghilli was appointed as director of a Panamanian company called Helios Petroleum Services SA, which that year was chosen as one of the six companies that would exploit the Orocual Field in an area of the Orinoco Oil Belt, in the state of Monagas, in eastern Venezuela. 

Ortega Díaz, who broke with Maduro’s government in 2018 and fled Venezuela to finally go into exile in Spain, said that in this way Constructora Conkor had won 59 contracts from PDVSA subsidiaries and affiliates between 2003 and 2017 and that, between these and other contracts obtained by the Petrovez company, they amassed more than 1 billion dollars in revenue.

Although there has been no independent and documented verification of Ortega Díaz’s claims, the truth is that Ruiz Mazzeo was quick to erase his digital footprint on the Internet, for which he hired the Spanish company Eliminalia .  

Ruiz Mazzeo has not been formally investigated for his companies in North Macedonia or for the accusations against Conkor. But he did face an accusation of being part of a money laundering network. It was in 2012 in the Federal Court of the Southern District of New York, together with his partner Ramón Koury Guevara. Then Ruiz Mazzeo and Koury Guevara were spared from that bitter experience after handing over $350,000 to the authorities. The investigation of the case was closed.

Briefcases of diffuse utility

Luisa Ortega Díaz’s allegations have also referred to another person with companies established in North Macedonia in connection with the late Eurostandard Bank scheme: Jesús Vidal Salazar.

Axio Financial Services was created by Fabio Ghilli, an Italian citizen with Venezuelan ID, who appointed Jorge Luis Chirinos Alvarado as the manager of the entity in Skopje. Both Ghilli and Chirinos were members of the board of directors of Guarapiche Servicios Petroleros SA, whose owner is the Venezuelan Jesús Vidal Salazar, according to the RNC. 

On her YouTube channel, the former attorney general claimed that Salazar’s construction company, Constructora Vidalsa 27, also improperly benefited from dozens of overpriced and unbidden government contracts. She accused Salazar of acting as a front man for the current Interior Minister, Diosdado Cabello, conventionally regarded as the number two in the ruling Chavista government. 

“Retired Sergeant Jesús Vidal Salazar Acevedo, through his company Constructora Vidalsa 27 CA, a company that actually belongs to Diosdado Cabello, has obtained lucrative contracts with the Venezuelan State,” Ortega Díaz said on May 20, 2020.

As in the case of Ruiz Mazzeo, to support the complaint Ortega showed some documents whose veracity has not been able to be independently confirmed. 

Ghilli’s connection with Salazar Acevedo, and also with Pdvsa, goes beyond his brief internship as one of the directors of Guarapiche Servicios Petroleros. In 2018, Ghilli was appointed as director of a Panamanian company called Helios Petroleum Services SA, which that year was chosen as one of the six companies that would exploit the Orocual Field in an area of the Orinoco Oil Belt, in the state of Monagas, in eastern Venezuela. 

Helios Petroleum Services is part of the Helios Vidal Consortium, which is also owned by Salazar Acevedo and in which a cousin of Diosdado Cabello, named Néstor Cabello Cabello, acts as director . 

Another Venezuelan, Héctor José Bracho Vivas, created a company in Skopje with the same name as one he owns in Venezuela, Insumos y Proyectos de Occidente CA, which obtained nine contracts with PDVSA between 2013 and 2017. 

Bracho Vivas is co-owner of another Venezuelan company with Denny Jhonny León Chacón, who also served in the documents found in Skopje as manager of a company in North Macedonia, Servicios Insumos y Consultoría, which shares the same name with a Venezuelan company that obtained at least three contracts from PDVSA. Bracho Vivas and León Chacón also share ownership in a recently created company registered in Florida, United States.

All of these companies registered in Skopje were dissolved in a regulatory manner, an automatic process in the commercial register of North Macedonia that provides for the closure of legal entities that do not complete a deposit of 5,000 euros or do not submit their financial report. In other words, with vague objectives, almost simultaneous incorporations and no major registered financial activity, these Venezuelan companies seem to have been established for a temporary circumstance. What was it about?

The expert in money laundering prevention and combat systems, Juan Carlos Torres, identifies in the dynamics exhibited by this ring of companies registered by Pdvsa contractors in North Macedonia, some indications that they were "briefcase" entities, prefabricated companies without a clear commercial objective that often maintain bank accounts to carry out what was possibly a "single operation." 

“It often happens that these companies exist in folders but there is no operation. While monitoring allows it, they transfer funds for a couple of years, or carry out a specific operation, and then they leave the accounts at zero and let the companies die, that is, they are automatically liquidated,” he explains.

The objective, according to Torres, could also have been a triangulation of payments to avoid sanctions imposed by Washington on commercial activities with PDVSA.

“What it seems to me is that this could have been a structure created to evade OFAC sanctions [ acronym for the Office of Foreign Assets Control of the Department of the Treasury ], because being contractors of PDVSA, it may be that these structures were created to make payments to PDVSA outside the United States financial system,” concludes Torres, who highlights that to make these triangulations, they usually look for “a regulatory framework that is not as strong or more lax, surely a tax regime that is also more permeable than that of another jurisdiction.”  

But it is RUR Consulting’s own audit report that ends up offering one of the most revealing clues about what may have inspired the unlikely link between the two countries. In 2019, Eurostandard Bank director Nikolce Petkovski travelled to Venezuela to negotiate a €17 million loan to recapitalise the bank, according to the audit. However, Petkovski “was unsuccessful in acquiring the money”, the document says.

Petkovski initially agreed to speak for this story but later canceled citing medical reasons. He did not respond to further questions sent by email. 

Armando.info , Occrp and IRL sent contact requests to all the people mentioned in this report. Only the legal department of Insumos y Proyectos de Occidente responded to an initial contact, although it ultimately did not respond to the questionnaire sent in response. 

There was money laundering in the bankruptcy

The collapse of Eurostandard in 2020 left more than 140,000 depositors without their savings. The Macedonian government’s Deposit Insurance Fund allocated more than 70 million euros to compensate them, although around 3,000 are still waiting to receive reimbursements funded by the sale of the bank’s last available assets. 

By the end of 2020, the Central Bank of Macedonia had detected major problems in the management of Eurostandard, including the irregular approval of unsecured loans that led to huge losses. 

In February 2021, prosecutors launched an investigation against four bank employees on suspicion of money laundering and other activities that contributed to the bank’s collapse. As the investigation expanded, authorities discovered more and more suspicious accounts, suggesting that fraud had spread further across the banking organization than initially believed, former head of the financial police in charge of the investigation, Arafat Muaremi, told local media.

In 2021, Blazo Trendafilov, former head of North Macedonia’s Financial Intelligence Authority, told Radio Free Europe that more than €100 million had been transferred abroad from Eurostandard by “high-risk clients” in a “very short period of time” – an apparent reference to funds linked to Venezuelan clients.  

But the related legal case has dragged on for years with little public sign of progress. Financial assets relating to the bank’s clients are said to have moved across 17 different countries, creating a complex trail that investigators are still trying to piece together. 

According to the Macedonian prosecutor’s office, international requests for help were sent to these countries, but only Serbia, which froze more than 3.3 million euros connected to the network in the country, has responded so far. Prosecutors stated for this story that another 660,000 euros had been frozen in local banks. 

 

George MacGregor