Archive for September 7th, 2011

The Fonden Papers Part VI: More information, the numbers still don’t add up!

September 7, 2011

As I noted in the next to last post, there is now more information on the website of Fonden on the details of the projects funded. After spending a day looking at “tools” that would allow me to manipulate the data, I gave up. So, I began doing the task by brute force, I went to “Todos Los Proyectos” above and copied project by project into an Excel spreadsheet, hoping to find some of the “missing” US$ 29 billion or so. You can find the Excel spreadsheet here.

The quick conclusion?

All of the projects added up to September 6th. 2011 on the webpage of Fonden add up to only US$ 27.22 billion, far from the US$ 69 billion of the earlier report to the National Assembly.

The difference?

Projects of the Ministry of Defense and Cuba are not described at all in the Fonden webpage (On purpose, I imagine). Thus, if we add the US$ 4.88 billion from Defense and the US$ 6.06 billion from Cuban projects, we reach the total of:

US$ 38.158 billion, some US$ 30 billion short (Still!) of the US$ 69 billion the fund has received and the total provided by the Finance Ministry to the National Assembly.

Thus, all the work did not yield much, except that by doing it brute force, I read every single project in the website in detail and will have more to say about them later. For now, we still have some US$ 29 billion “Unaccounted for” based on the information provided to the National Assembly, as well as combining the projects in the Fonden website on Sept. 6th. 2011 plus those missing from it in the report to the Assembly.

Small change for the revolution…

Posted in The Fonden Papers, Uncategorized, Venezuela | 22 Comments »

Did Venezuela “give” Gambia US$ 22 million for its Electric Network? Well, no, but yes…

September 7, 2011

When people are having problems with their own electricity, protests in Margarita Island come to mind, it does not sit well to hear that Venezuela gave US$ 22 million to Gambia for its electric network. In my opinion, Gambia may actually be one of the few countries that may deserve such a gift, Haiti being another one that comes to mind, but it is indeed somewhat typical of this wishy-washy Government that even when they are doing good, they want to protect their image.

Thus yesterday, the Vice-Minister for Foreign Relations said this was false, despite the press conference in Gambia by the guy in charge of electrification in that country. My friend @Naldoxx contacted me yesterday and showed me documents (part of which has since been published by la patilla!) of which you can see the portion of the funding above. In no uncertain terms, it says that Venezuela’s Bandes has lent that country the money for the project.

Thus, in terms of half truths, the Vice Minister is right, Bandes lent the money to the Gambian Government, it is not a gift, just a loan, but in the end, I suspect it is the same, somehow Venezuela does not collect in most of these loans, least of all from Gambia, a country that will likely have to roll over the loan over and over.

So, it is false Venezuela gave Gambia the money, it was Bandes, and it was a loan, not a gift, OK?

Note Added: And my friend @Naldoxx sends me a link to the Bandes magazine, simply priceless (page 10-11):

Posted in Venezuela | 21 Comments »