Published at: 09/07/2025 09:00 PM

(Sources: Diario de Caracas, Revista Al Margen and Diario 2001)

Presidency: Jaime Lusinchi (1984-1989)

Involved: Jaime Lusinchi, former president and senator for life of the Republic; Blanca Ibáñez, private secretary of the Head of State; four former ministers of the Executive Office of the President of the Republic, in complicity with more than 3,000 companies (mostly ghosts) in the private sector, accused of having committed the crimes of overbilling of goods, fraudulent use of public funds, improper granting of compliance with importing and collecting commissions, in obtaining surpluses of preferred currencies.

Magnitude of the case: $11 billion USD, equivalent to almost double the nation's total international reserves ($6.607 million).

Two cases: “The Expiatory Chinese” (The Chinese from RECADI) and Alfredo Paul Delfino, another Master of the Valley behind bars.

• “The Expiatory Chinese”: Without even having offices or livestock farms, the brothers Ho Fuk Shum and Ho Fuk Wing obtained more than 100 million preferential dollars, through 19 fake companies, for the import of heifers intended for the genetic improvement of non-existent herds.
• Ho Fuk Wing was arrested in Valencia, edo. Carabobo, on February 2, 1989, being the only one, of the more than 3,000 indicted, who paid a prison sentence for the RECADI corruption scheme. His brother, Shum, fled to Panama, thus evading the judgment handed down by the 37th Criminal Safeguard Court.
• Wing was released on October 23, 1992, after serving a 3 and a half year sentence for corruption. He was the scapegoat that paid for the atrocities of a government, where “the society of accomplices” did not intervene.
• On June 1, 1989, Alfredo Paul Delfino, former president of FEDECÁMARAS (1973-1975), when he came to the defense of the thousands of briefcase companies that illegally obtained RECADI currency and his imprisoned friend, Nicomedes Zuloaga, said at a press conference that “both Jaime Lusinchi and his private undersecretary, Blanca Ibáñez, were the the real culprits of this affair; who should receive the highest moral and judicial condemnation for the billions of dollars defrauded from the nation.”
• Faced with this assertion, made to the media, Delfino was formally summoned by RECADI's Special Investigating Judge, La Riva López, to give a statement to his office.
• The billionaire businessman replied: “If that judge keeps pooping, I'll have him killed.” On the basis of which the examining magistrate in the case ordered eight-day disciplinary arrest, for disrespect and contempt of the judicial authority.
• At the time of his arrest, this Master of the Valley excused himself by telling the press: “I am a conservationist, I don't kill animals.” He was thus imprisoned for eight days in a cell on the second floor of the headquarters of La Candelaria.

Mazo News Team