In the special session of the United Nations General Assembly against corruption, Venezuela ratified this Thursday its faithful commitment to prevent, combat and punish the scourge of corruption in all its dimensions, as one of the main enemies of poverty and in the development and consolidation of equitable societies.
In this sense, the Minister of People’s Power for Foreign Relations, Jorge Arreaza, recalled that Venezuela has been a signatory country to the Convention since its initial adoption at the Mérida-Mexico Conference in December 2003, a date that marked a historic milestone and established the legal bases in the Multilateral Cooperation in this matter, and that every day becomes an urgent call of the peoples that many times have seen their rights and actions frustrated because of dishonest minorities possessed of power and economic systems that promote inequality.
Likewise, Chancellor Jorge Arreaza stated that the Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela of 1999 establishes as a value of political action, (the) participatory and protagonist democracy that grants the people, through various political and institutional mechanisms, the powers of management control public.
He explained that the Magna Carta also created a new Public Power, the Citizen Power as the main guarantor of the fair and effective stewardship of state policies made up of the General Prosecutor’s Office, the General Comptroller’s Office and the Ombudsman’s Office, together with the Republican Moral Council, that thus represent the sustenance and the institutional guarantee, to prevent and combat corrupt practices, together with the multiple spaces of the People’s Power:
“We are encouraged by the conviction that the resources managed by the States and the economic and political relations, must respond as a sine qua non condition to the public welfare, particularly that of the most vulnerable. This implies that holding a public or private position entails a great social responsibility that must be honored at all times”, added the Venezuelan Chancellor.
Arreaza stressed that no society is exempt from the scourge of corruption, both in its public and state level, as well as in the one usually forgotten in the private dimension, which is structurally protected by an economic model that rewards exploitation and usury, which promotes concentration of wealth in few hands, and generates an inequitable and unequal society:
“There is no public corrupt without a private corruptor, these implanted and naturalized exploitation schemes are the main cause of the most widespread and unfortunately invisible corruption practices and constitute a serious confrontation against the pillars of the United Nations, especially Human Rights”, he indicated.
In the same way, he specified that the Venezuelan people today is forced to assume the consequences of the criminal application of an economic blockade and coercive and unilateral measures, as an act of unquestionable corruption, it has assets frozen for more than 30 billion dollars belonging to the Republic and which should be destined to guarantee the health and nutrition of the people, particularly amidst the worst pandemic in 100 years:
“We are referring to a form of corruption induced from centers of power with geopolitical intentions. The aggression against Venezuela has deprived us of fund companies, of financing capacity. Much of this notoriously ill-gotten wealth has fallen into the accounts of corrupt politicians, legal desks, and even the dark hands of the United States Government. This looting has unleashed the ambitions of commercial and financial sectors that use any strategy in a cynical and immoral way, to take advantage of the vulnerabilities of companies and sectors linked to Venezuela, with the aim of stealing those resources from the Venezuelan people”, he said.
He stressed on the case of the Citgo company, whose illegal dispossession has generated an international corruption scheme of billions of dollars, which has even been recently revealed by media such as The Washington Post and acknowledged by authorities in that country.
He emphasized that the institutional infrastructure of the Venezuelan State has acted firmly against corruption at various levels and maintains a permanent improvement in the application of existing mechanisms, based on the Anti-Corruption Law and the safeguarding of public assets: “We escape this scourge that we face day by day and hour by hour”, he added.
Finally, he assured that Venezuela as a signatory state of the Convention, will begin from June 7 to 10, 2021 the second cycle of the review examination of the application of the Convention against Corruption, covering the 2016-2021 term:
“This examination demonstrates our country’s transparent and inclusive commitment to the Convention. And on behalf of President Nicolás Maduro, we ratify the Venezuelan Government’s commitment to multilateral and bilateral cooperation against corrupt practices, in favor of transparent public management and equitable power relations, from the political and economic aspects in the public and private dimensions”, he concluded.
