José Antonio Oliveros Febres-Cordero, owner of the Active Bank of Venezuela has been the focus of judicial investigations for the alleged commission of crimes such as misappropriation, violation of fiduciary rights, fraud, theft, and corruption, among others. Oliveros began his professional career in Banesco, owned by Juan Carlos Escotet, from where he left after alleged fund appropriation operations were involved. In addition, we must remember how his name appeared in the Panama Papers.
At the end of the first decade of the 21st century, Oliveros did not hesitate to boast about the great friendship that united him with Baldo Sansó, the brother-in-law of the then almighty Rafael Ramírez, minister and president of PDVSA and, thanks to these relationships, he achieved a meteoric rise since Sansó granted him more than 20 million dollars of PDVSA for the purchase of the Active Bank. According to the Venezuelan press, the bank may have been used by Ramírez's plot to divert funds from the oil industry.
After the death of Hugo Chávez, Oliveros has played with two decks, since, according to different Venezuelan media, he has done business with Bolichians based mainly in Spain and allegedly has financed exiled opponents. An example is found in his relationship with the family of Leopoldo López. According to the newspaper Por La Noticia, when Leopoldo López was mayor of Chacao, the Active Bank of Oliveros financed the purchase of vehicles for public transport.
Oliveros was also a client and friend of Matthias Krull, who is currently incarcerated in the United States for money laundering from PDVSA. According to the Venezuelan press, Krull was the person who allegedly opened the accounts of Oliveros in Switzerland to whom the money he had taken from his own banks arrived.
The different investigations of the Justice of Venezuela forced Oliveros to escape the country after the imposition of precautionary measures such as the prohibition to leave the country and the embargo of their accounts. In his escape, he was able to take valuable items that were acquired with the funds of the Active Bank, such as tableware that belonged to Simón Bolívar. He currently lives with his wife, Ana Teresa Neri Bonilla in the Dominican Republic in a luxurious mansion that pays the bank. From there he moves on the planes of his property to his work centers in Madrid, Miami, Puerto Rico or New York.
On the other hand, Oliveros is being investigated for alleged corruption and fraud in the intention to purchase Gyro Bank on Curacao Island, where he would be allegedly involved in paying bribes to the president of the Central Bank of that island, for 1.5 million dollars for the concession of the same. In this investigation the FBI participates, since, allegedly, funds from an American bank were used to corrupt a foreign official According to the information obtained by the newspaper By the News of the Central Bank of Curaçao, although the purchase was authorized, The president's recommendation was that it not be authorized, given that there were elements that linked the relationship between Banco Active and José Antonio Oliveros with the Government of Venezuela.
Oliveros' brother-in-law is Jorge Neri Bonilla, a Venezuelan businessman based in Madrid, who, according to the Venezuelan press and the documentation held by Diario16, was Baldo Sansó's right-hand man, Rafael Ramírez's brother-in-law and one of the leaders of the association that took more than 40 billion dollars from Venezuela.
Oliveros, in addition to the Active Bank, has businesses and companies in Spain, as well as a large real estate, according to the Venezuelan press. Even sources close to Oliveros confirm that the banker joins a relationship of friendship with the president of Santander, Ana Patricia Botín. The newspaper Por la Noticia exposes some of them: the company Inversora Salamanca 2014 SRL is the owner of the Margarita Building, on Somera 5 Street, in the luxurious area of La Florida in Madrid, where the multinational food company currently has its corporate offices McDonald's Another company of Oliveros, Inversiones Turpial SLU owns an apartment on Calle Ortega y Gasset in Madrid valued at two million euros and is mortgaged by the Active Bank itself, a fact that is repeated with the property it has on Jorge Street Juan de Madrid, valued at more than 4 million euros, on behalf of Gorlio Enterprises. Coincidentally, these latter properties are close to the address where Oliveros' brother-in-law, Jorge Neri, is domiciled.
The graph shows a series of business and personal relationships between the Neri family and the banker Oliveros. The former president of PDVSA is married to Beatrice Sansó, to whom he gave special powers, as Diario16 advanced, and who is the sister of one of Ramírez's main collaborators when managing the alleged corruption plot that he took from Venezuela more of 40,000 million euros: Baldo Sansó. This was also a partner of Jorge Neri in PDVSA-related businesses with which, as reported by investigative journalist Alek Boyd, he made business trips to Asia.
On the other hand, Oliveros has followed the same modus operandi of many of the Bolichians who arrived in Spain after the death of Hugo Chavez, many of whom are being investigated, tried or imprisoned in different countries, including Spain, for crimes of money laundering. capital, scam, unfair administration or corruption. This way of acting inevitably involves the purchase of companies that then control from matrices in tax havens and the realization of real estate investments in the most exclusive neighborhoods of Madrid, Barcelona or in areas of great purchasing power such as Marbella or Sotogrande.
Did the Active Bank serve as an entity for the business of the plot of Ramírez and its partners? That will be determined by Justice, but Oliveros' friendship and family relationships indicate that it would be very difficult not to be so
In the meantime, the Council of Minister of Curacao has requested a forensic investigation into the Central Bank of Curacao and St. Maarten, The Giro of Curacao and the Ennia Group of Companies.
Source: DIARIO 16
