Oil Minister Tareck El Aissami announces his resignation on Twitter and says he will cooperate with the government investigation.
Venezuela’s powerful oil minister has announced his resignation following the arrest of at least six high-level officials amid a corruption probe targeting state-owned Petróleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA), the judiciary and other parts of the government. .
Tareck El Aissami announced his resignation on Twitter on Monday and promised to help in the investigation of any complaint involving PDVSA, while offering support to President Nicolás Maduro’s anti-corruption campaign.
“…I make myself available to the leadership (of the ruling party) to support this crusade that President @NicolasMaduro has undertaken against the anti-values that we are obliged to fight, even with our lives,” El Aissami wrote.
Similarly, in my capacity as a revolutionary militant, I place myself at the disposal of the leadership of the PSUV to support this crusade that the President has undertaken @NicolasMaduro against the anti-values that we are obliged to fight, even with our lives.
—Tareck El Aissami (@TareckPSUV) March 20, 2023
Maduro did not immediately name a replacement for El Aissami, who has served as vice president, minister and mayor for the past two decades.
Maduro, who has led previous anti-corruption campaigns, said in televised remarks that his government is committed to “getting to the root” of the problem.
Although corruption has long been rampant in Venezuela, arresting government officials for corrupt practices is rare in a country with the world’s largest oil reserves. The fact that officials are rarely held to account is a major irritation factor for citizens, most of whom now lives on $1.90 a day, the international benchmark for extreme poverty.
Maduro acknowledged El Aissami’s resignation in televised remarks during a meeting of ruling party leaders. He said he accepted the minister’s decision to “facilitate all investigations that result in the establishment of the truth, the punishment of the culprits and justice in all these cases.”
the united states government appointed El Aissami, a powerful ally of Maduro, a drug lord in 2017 in connection with activities in his previous positions as Minister of the Interior and Governor of the country. The US Treasury Department alleges that he “oversaw or partially owned narcotics shipments of more than 1,000 kilograms from Venezuela on multiple occasions, including those with final destinations in Mexico and the United States.” He has denied the accusations.
Under the government of the late President Hugo Chávez, El Aissami headed the Interior Ministry. He was appointed Minister of Petroleum in April 2020.
Oil is the most important industry in Venezuela.
A windfall of hundreds of billions in oil dollars thanks to record world prices allowed Chávez to launch numerous initiatives, including state-run food markets, new public housing, free health clinics and educational programs.
But a subsequent price crash and government mismanagement, first under the Chávez government and then under Maduro, ended the prodigal spending. And so began a complex crisis that has pushed millions into poverty and has led more than seven million Venezuelans to migrate.
Mismanagement by PDVSA and, more recently, US-imposed economic sanctions have also led to a steady decline in production, from 3.5 million barrels per day when Chávez took office in 1999 to about 700,000 barrels per day last year.
In 2016, Venezuela’s then-opposition-led National Assembly said $11 billion had been lost to PDVSA in the 2004-14 period. In 2015, the US Treasury Department accused an Andorran bank of laundering some $2 billion stolen from PDVSA.
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