The Devil's Excrement

Esther Bigott the Loaiza is a Venezuelan lawyer close to Vice-President Rangel,
who has acted in a number of cases to defended Rangel and even President Hugo
Chavez. Last week, it was revealed that the Ministry of Finance was paying her
US$18 million per year to help defend the Government in the Bandagro suit.
The Bandagro bonds are some reportedly phantom bonds that have been around for
years. I
referred to the case recently, because the Cabinet’s lawyer Marisol Plaza
was removed recently because she gave an opinion saying the bonds were real
which are the bases for a billion dollar suit against the Venezuelan Government
in Ohio and Switzerland.

Bigott de Loaiza has denied that she was being paid such an amount per year,
saying she is only getting “expenses”. However, it has surfaced that
she hired another Venezuelan named Claudia Silvestre who lives in the US, to
help her out in the case promising 14.4% of her payments (of the US$ 18 million
retainer) to the tune of US$ 2.59 million dollars. Unfortunately, Bigott de
Loaiza reneged on her promise and Silvestre sued her in New York Court as can
be seen here. Silvestre lost the case because the contract between her and
Loaiza explicitly said that any disagreement would be decided in Venezuelan
Courts.

However, the contract gives nice tidbits of how money is thrown around by the
revolution. According to the Court’s papers Claudia Silvestre, while residing
in Miami, is only authorized to practice law in Venezuela and not the US. Moreover, Silvestre says in her
injunction that her service was simply:

” she provided assistance in setting up the Account so that the
Venezuelan Government could directly deposit payments for the legal services
provided by defendants in connection with the foreign actions and that she
arranged payment to United
States counsel from the Account.”

Nice job if you can get it, no?

This entry was posted on May 7, 2006 at 1:48 pm and is filed under Venezuela.