The 15th Civil Court with jurisdiction in the Forfeiture of Assets declared the ownership that brothers Rafael Guillermo and Roger Vicente Rodríguez Perdomo had over a set of movable and immovable assets extinguished, which now pass into the hands of the Venezuelan State, according to judicial sources.
The decision was announced on Wednesday afternoon at the aforementioned court located in the Centro Financiero Latino, Avenida Urdaneta, Caracas, after the conclusion of the forfeiture trial initiated at the beginning of this year.
This trial is the first to be held after the approval of the Organic Law on Asset Forfeiture, published in the extraordinary Official Gazette 6.745 of April 28, 2023.
The purpose of this law is for the State to recover assets "originating from illicit activities." Precisely the Perdomo brothers appear on the list of the 61 detainees allegedly involved in the Pdvsa-Cripto corruption plot, which involved the allocation of oil tankers to businessmen and public officials who marketed them without delivering the fruits of those sales to the state company, as stated by the Public Ministry.
In light of this circumstance, the Public Prosecutor's Office requested that the Perdomo brothers' ownership of certain assets be forfeited, which they suspect were obtained with money from illegal operations detected at PDVSA. The Perdomo brothers denied this accusation and submitted documents on the origin of the assets.
This request from the Public Prosecutor's Office was debated during a trial before the Fifteenth Court of First Instance in Civil, Commercial, Traffic and Maritime Matters of the Judicial District of the Metropolitan Area of Caracas with National Jurisdiction in Forfeiture of Assets in charge of Judge José Suárez.
In its submission, the Public Prosecutor's Office requested that the assets of third parties not be affected, a request that was denied by the aforementioned court, the source explained.
By declaring the forfeiture of the assets of the Perdomo brothers, the court attributed them to the State of Venezuela. Consequently, it ordered their delivery, taking into account the catalogue of properties recorded in the document presented to the court by the Public Prosecutor's Office.
But the ruling clarifies that if other assets are found (not specified in the aforementioned catalogue), the court authorizes the National Service of Seized Assets "to consider them for extinction and the Attorney General's Office will be notified."
Among the assets that passed to the State as a result of this decision are the Sena tower, the Camponorte building, the Country Club apartment, PH Valle Arriba, land on Madrid Las Mercedes street, Torre Europa, an office in the Galipán Business Center, an office in Torre La Castellana, Torre Guayana, offices in Torre BNC, Torre SMA and Torre Empresarial JL, among others.
On December 12, Executive Vice President Delcy Rodríguez appointed Kenny Antonio Díaz Rosario as General Director of the Recovered Property Service, the entity in charge of managing properties whose domain extinction is declared by a specialized court in that matter.
Abel Ernesto Durán Gómez, Larry Devoe, Marcos Marfred Seijas and Gladys Patricia Gómez Méndez were also appointed as principal directors of the Board of Directors of the Recovered Property Service, according to the decree.
The law must be applied, whoever is responsible must pay for the damage caused to the Venezuelan state.
That's good, they should have put that law in place a long time ago, tough on those criminals