after years of reading every crappy story venezuela has to offer i've come to the following conclusion.

hugo chavez himself (not just his ministers/family members and every other scumbag politician) has been directly funneling huge amonts of money thru various overseas banking institutions. and i mean huge....rodolfo sanz is getting some heat over $1/2bil or so that's missing from the CVG's aluminum branch's but it looks like that money was filtered thru lebanon banks which were set up by hugo.

the pdvsa is the cash cow of all of venezuela yet never seems to have enough money to pay any debts. they do no maintenance, their equipment was paid for by external sources (like exxon/mobil) they take huge advance payments from russia, china, etc....

my guess, hugo has siphoned off $25bil (give or take 10bil) in the last 5 years to overseas banks. primarily (from what i can see) middle eastern banks.

here's a snippit from his current trip to syria, after 20 paragraphs about israel and US being the warmongering terrorists of the world, the last two paragraphs of the story are this:

"The President said Syria can be Venezuela's gate to Asia and the Middle East, while Venezuela can be Syria's marine gate to relations with Latin America.

He added, "It is not possible to set up trade and economic relations without financial facilitation especially banks. There are obstacles because of far distance; however, there is a strength which is the humanitarian bridge between the two countries"

...why? if venezuela is so dirt poor it cant pay peoples wages, pick up garbage, have running water or electric do they need yet another banking relationship... and what is all this cash being used for?