I, Jose Herrera, write this and all subsequent posts on this platform because I need a tool to seriously expose the reasons I am currently unable to return to my home country, where I would rather live. The events behind these reasons began taking place in 2009 and they continued to occur up until late 2015, when I decided to leave Venezuela for good.
I have learned that running away from one's country because one's life is at risk must be very well documented (for asylum-seeking purposes). I have drafted this sad and stressful story numerous times in order to make it more simple and understandable for the reader. I already attempted to do this in France but I failed to translate enough documents into French, a language I have not professionally mastered. The French government is aware of most of the story, at least. I have now come to the USA in order to seek asylum. In spite of the fact that I would certainly love to forget about these events, I must continue to write about them during my process as an asylum seeker. Therefore, I decided to also share them with the public through a platform of concerned readers like steemit.com.
This blog will describe the events that led me to leave Venezuela. There is a thread of 33 specific events to be published here describing my oblivious journey as the informant of a journalist in London. A powerful murderous mafia network of Venezuelan politicians claiming to work to 'include the poor' was unveiled thanks to the information I provided to this English journalist and webmaster.
This story begins as my aunt Maria (a national inspector in charge of some trust funds for the Venezuelan government) was murdered three days after she had basically told me the reasons during a dinner party. I decided to share these details with journalist Roy S Carson, with whom I worked in London, in order to get justice.
I did not realize that, by denouncing the murder, I had also made it impossible for a PSUV network of corruption in the Venezuelan state of Anzoategui to avoid prosecution and public shaming for coordinating with the murderers in several other crimes. PSUV stands for United Socialist Party of Venezuela. My aunt worked for the central government and was killed by men sent by a network of corrupt people connected to a local government from the same political party as the central government, the Chavez-founded PSUV.
My aunt's widower was harassed financially because he kept paying his lawyers to keep the case open against Manuel Andrade and his business partner, who ordered Maria's murder. These two murder masterminds were protected from a powerful invisible hand within the government that kept rescheduling the trial or changing the judge in charge of the murder case. The masterminds were also transferred to a more comfortable detention facility --one where politicians, not murderers, are usually kept under arrest.
I was harassed financially and tortured psychologically numerous times after I was tracked down by this mafia network. The last and most relevant event for me was when they ordered the murder of a good friend of mine who had agreed to work for me as a sort of bodyguard because of his connection to me. This blog will list each episode of the story chronologically, where these events of financial harassment, psychological torture and murder will be related.
The first episode is provided below today:
-Before Maria was Murdered- (First post of this blog)
My aunt Maria, her son and I (Jose Herrera) gathered for dinner in order to catch up as relatives but she could not help to mention a corruption case during the conversation. This conversation took place in the same apartment where she was murdered three days later.
Maria was very excited to share with me the details of a case of corrupt people who had managed to steal money from a government trust held by Banco Guayana under her supervision.
Maria had been summoned to work for the Venezuelan Ministry of Housing and was in charge of trust money held Banco Guayana for the Mayor's Office in San Jose de Guanipa (El Tigrito) in Anzoátegui State.
Her signature had been forged to release the trust funds. She told me about past episodes where Manuel Andrade, the corrupt man who paid to have her murdered three days later, was the protagonist of different schemes. Her meetings with Manuel Andrade and the officials from the Mayor’s Office in San José de Guanipa (El Tigrito) where Andrade offered fancy meals, private meetings, partnerships, gifts, etc. in order to have her sign the release of payments for construction projects she deemed questionable and irregular. She mentioned the polite ways in which she declined to accept his invitations and gifts.
She also told me about her phone cals and Fax calls with Banco Guayana that led her to find out that the trust money had been taken out by Manuel Andrade and his network anyway.
She also talked about Manuel Andrade's company overcharging the government and getting paid by the bank by forging her signature, of which she had a faxed copy.
She then told me about the fact that she had reported this case to the main offices in Caracas and she had been told to forget about it.
My aunt had been raised in Venezuela since her early childhood by her Swiss parents and sometimes she missed certain social cues. In this case, she failed to understand that if the central government in Caracas told her to forget about a corruption case, she must have truly tried to forget it. She had also failed to realize that, in Venezuela, when you work as an inspector for trust money, you must become a partner of corrupt mafias who simply pay you not to inspect... and hence everyone is happy.
I recall having told her right when she mentioned this that it sounded like these people may be after her life. My aunt responded that she was not afraid. She had become habituated to being inconvenient to corrupt people.
This conversation was long since she had so much to say. She brought out a folder with many documents about the same case. For every sheet of paper she got out of the folder, there were at least 20 additional minutes of story. Her son, my cousin, fell asleep next to us on a hammock out of boredom because he had always heard her talk about similar topics.
Approximately at 3 am, my cousin and I left her apartment heading to her ex-husband's residence, where I was staying during my week-long visit to Anzoategui state. The next day, I went to my city in Aragua state.
End of first episode. --As acknowledged before, this story is divided into 33 different episodes.
The next (second) post on this story is: "Torture and Murder on March 11, 2009."
It will be posted within the next 24-48 hours.
Thanks for reading.
Jose Herrera