“The basic companies are in crisis, produce to loss”

Neither hidden nor evaded. Rodolfo Sanz assures the transparency its management in the Ministry of Basic Industries and Mining. After two months in silence, it accepted to count his version and to respond the question that all wanted to do to him:

-Why it handled an account of the Venezuelan Corporation of Guayana in a bank of Lebanon?

- To That we abrimos it account in October of the last year, when we realised the sales of aluminum to future. The Russian bank, Gazprombank, were one of the intermediaries because the Government has a strategic alliance with Russia and that bank.

-Gazprombank is the bank that the Government uses?

- We worked financially with them and seems that they are going to establish a branch in Latin America. Hopefully.

-And how they get to deposit the resources in Lebanon?

- It was the branch of the Lebanon because therefore it determined Gazprombank to it. The interests are higher than in Moscow and they said to us that he was more advantageous.

- More advantageous Era because it works as the account of a fiscal paradise.

- I do not know if it is a paradise or a hell. I do not know, but nobody said nothing when we had accounts in the North American banks. The problem is not where it is, but the transparency of the operations.

-And you guarantee that transparency?

- Clearly. If the Office of the public prosecutor wants abrir an investigation it can review the movements. Here it is the authorization of the Central bank abrir the account of the Lebanon and other than is in the Development bank of China.

- Or it is, Nelson Merentes authorized abrir the account?

- He was authorized by him and the directory of the Central bank.

- Llama the attention that outside a based account.

-What counts based? That is lie, is a public account that I handled the administrator, Lina Marcano, and.

-How much money left in that account?

- I do not know, are the balances there. That money was changed in the Central bank and given back in list, suppliers and utilities.

-But which was the final balance of the account?

- They are 10 million dollars.

-And to where they were the other $490 million of the aluminum sales?

- The aluminum contracts never gave 500 million, were 404.180.720 dollars and they were spent in payment to suppliers, pays and wages. Who has doubts that an audit does. I had two options: or we did this or he asked silver to him president Hugo Chavez, and I am not in agreement with that.

-The President was abreast of that account?

- The person in charge of this I am. The President cannot be pending of the handling that each minister in an account does, that is impossible like also is exabrupto to say that minister Sanz had a personal account in which he handled 500 million dollars, because there is to be well stupid to do that, and I will have face of bad, but I do not believe that she has face of stupid.

- One assumes that those resources went for technology.

- That is lie, that money was not for technology. No sales contract can establish in what they are going away to use the resources. I sold aluminum to future and they paid to me in advance, more nothing.

- But with the electrical crisis, the CVG is not going to be able to produce engaged aluminum.

- Those buyers are prepared to negotiate. I said it to the Chinese (minister Jose Khan): “They are renegotiated”.

- In they blame it to Guayana to mortgage the companies.

- There is no mortgage. Those were good contracts: they allowed to have dollars in advance to solve the financial crisis of the companies, it cleared manjar to him of the mouth to which they resold aluminum quotas and guaranteed market in the middle of a world-wide crisis.

-Why they did not bid on those contracts?

- They are sales contracts, do not make lack licitations when the prices of the market are improving.

-Why it did not say it before?

- Good, because I did not believe advisable to speak. I briefed a delivery act and presented/displayed a report in Guayana. There they were the mass media, but what he interests to them he is to pass invoice to me because I eliminated the quotas of aluminum.

- What balance does of its management in the Ministry?

- Positive

-But what did?

- I lead the process of estatización of Sidor; we put to produce gold mines that had Crystallex and other transnational companies; we discover and we restrained the illegal operation of coltán, blue gold, and I initiated a new modality: the economico-financial operations in banks of China and Russia.

I reduced the pays of all the managers of Sidor in 65% and although I could acquire the 50,000 dollars that received the ex- managers, I remained with the 6 million bolivars that won like minister. Díganme if it were not a positive management? I fought the contraband and I defeated the intermediaries. I knew to what I went to Guayana, I accomplish a mission that gave Chávez me and leave satisfied and with the forehead in stop.

-And why it left?

- Because in any government the changes are normal and the commander Hugo Chavez considered that already she had given what had to give, and I assume it with naturalness.

-And now what is going to do? One said that it was going to send itself to deputy.

- I say like Leon Trotsky: “Simply a shift of position within the Revolution”. I do not go in the lists to the National Assembly, but I formed in Vantage point and from I am going here to work in the campaign.

-And how it is with the President? , it is satisfied?

- I believe that yes, the opposite has not said to me. I went to the Cabinet and she dismissed to me there.

- You said once “the basic companies arrived at the llegadero”. They will be broken?

- Obvious that they are in crisis, we produce aluminum to loss. That to any it says me genius what we must do if extractions one ton to 3,700 dollars you sell and it to 2.000. The labor cost of each ton is in 53%, when in Australia and the United States it is in 16 and 17%. We decided to guarantee the uses but that causes that the relation necessary work/work surplus is of -67%. That is to say, there is no capital gain production.

-What we do then?

- The exchange anchorage of before also affected negatively. When the price of the dollar happened from 2.15 to 4.30 bolivars improved the box flow. But also it has to conduct operations of financial character, contracts to future, to administer the resources and to go to the transformation waters very well down. That is to say, to create aluminum processors and to relocate to the workers in those projects.

- According to which it says, the exchange control is a tie.

--It is an exchange control and point. The national economy is a totality: if you clear the control there is a hemorrhage of dollars. To that it removed a dollar in hung it to Taiwan in a place, but the miracle of “the Asian tigers” occurred thus.

-We hang to people then?

- Good we did not hang it, but the measurement against the stock market houses looks for to clean up the handling of currencies.

- We are in a global economy. As much so the CVG now has an account in Lebanon.

- Yes, but that account also has controls, are not dollars to the free one.

jpoliszuk@eluniversal.com