MADRID.- José Luis Zabala is a fan of Ermenegildo Zegna fashion and Louis Vuitton bags. In 2009, this Venezuelan insurance broker spent 219,468 euros in these firms. Another of his passions are watches, especially luxury Swiss ones. For example, he paid 149,900 euros to get an exclusive gold copy of a limited edition of Jaeger-LeCoultre in 2010.
Zabala's credit cards seemed to have no limit and were fed from a bottomless pit, his million-dollar accounts hidden in Andorra. The analysis of the invoices and their bank movements, to which the newspaper El País has had access, reveal the passion for the good life of this Venezuelan businessman who has been prosecuted since 2018 in the Pyrenean principality for participating in the looting of one of the main public energy companies in Latin America, Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA).
The charges on the cards and transfers confirm that between 2008 and 2012 -when the robbery of the oil company was forged-, Zabala paid more than four million euros in jewelry, hotels and works of art. He also purchased a villa in an exclusive development in the Dominican Republic.
The businessman, who did not work at PDVSA, is on trial in Andorra for his links to one of the members of the plot that plundered the public company, the Venezuelan insurance magnate Omar Farías.
Zabala, 48, spent 646,000 euros in 2010 alone to accumulate jewelry and watches. Along with the Jaeger-LeCoultre for almost 150,000 euros, that same year he acquired a pink gold IWC for 155,000 euros. From this Swiss firm he bought another five copies, including one in platinum of the Big Pilot aviator model (34,445 euros) and another in white gold (18,190 euros). A women's Parmigiani Kalpa, gold with diamonds and manually assembled, at a cost of 18,190 euros also became part of the Zabala collection, which also includes several Patek Philippe pieces. The defendant spent 126,760 euros in stores of the latter Geneva manufacturer of luxury watches.
The jewelery chapter is completed with payments of 20,800 euros for 18-carat gold earrings with diamonds; 13,000 euros for a pink gold ring with precious and brilliant stones, and 800 euros for three Cartier pens. In addition, Zabala disbursed 27,380 euros in the Wempe jewelry store in Madrid.
Art was another of Zabala's refined hobbies during the years of the plundering of PDVSA. 855,000 euros were spent on this chapter. The insurance broker paid a total of 370,000 euros in 2010 for the work Psysichromie number 507 by the Franco-Venezuelan artist Carlos Cruz-Díez, a piece from the Denise René gallery in Paris, which belonged to the Venezuelan intellectual Alfredo Boulton, according to a seller's document, Caracas Graphic Art gallery.
Zabala also paid 485,000 euros in 2010 for Amantes, a bronze sculpture modeled in 1985 by Colombian Fernando Botero. The piece included a certificate of authenticity signed by the author himself. "Work of my hand", reads the guarantee.
The documents show that in January 2011 the insurance broker gave a deposit of 602,000 euros to acquire a luxurious villa of 915 square meters valued at 1.7 million euros in the exclusive urbanization of Cap Cana, in Higüey, a tourist municipality in the Dominican Republic. And that Zabala spent 33,645 euros in 2014 on different repairs to improve the garden of this property called Villa Marina Cap Cana.
The account in the hotels and restaurants section was also bulky. It added more than 100,000 euros. Despite the fact that Zabala had a predilection for staying in establishments of the Marriott International chain (48,500 euros in expenses) and Mandarin Oriental (27,192) in Cancun (Mexico) and the United States, the insurance businessman's traveling journey led him to other hotel firms to enjoy dream stays.
Life insurance of 96,000 euros
The records of his cards marked his footprints around the world. In Miami Beach, he stopped by the exclusive Bal Harbor mall. In Rome, he visited the Eden (10,000 euros) and St. Regis (4,401) hotels. In Madrid, the Villa Magna (5,855) and the Ritz (1,968). And even passed in March 2011 by the emblematic Bellagio (437 euros) in Las Vegas. This is revealed by bank movements that also record payments of 88,358 euros at El Corte Inglés, 12,901 euros at Galeries Lafayette and 11,200 euros at the Le Meurice spa in Paris. His life insurance for the period 2011-2012 with the New York Life Insurance Company amounted to 96,000 euros.
Zabala ordered most of these payments from Banca Privada d'Andorra (BPA), where he controlled two accounts since 2007. One in his name, which he shared with Ailyn Saireth Meneses Rosillo, and another under the name of the Panamanian company Greentrail International Inc.
The latter was established by the Panamanian law firm Alcogal, an insatiable producer of offshore companies for fraudsters from all over the planet. In the document known as know your customer (know your client, in English) —a sort of third degree to which the bank submits its clients to explain the origin of their funds—, Zabala presented himself as manager and president of several companies of another of those prosecuted in Andorra for the looting of PDVSA, the insurance businessman Omar Farías.
And he told the financial institution that he chose the BPA, where he planned to transfer 900,000 euros every two months, for “security and confidentiality”. Andorra remained shielded until 2017 by bank secrecy.
The charges on Zabala's credit cards fell to his accounts at the BPA. In 2009, he collected 14.6 million there. The money came from the instrumental company Highland Assets Corp S.A., controlled by Luis Mariano Rodríguez, alleged figurehead of Diego Salazar, cousin of the former Venezuelan Energy Minister with Hugo Chávez, president of PDVSA and former UN ambassador, Rafael Ramírez. To justify these payments, the Venezuelan insurance broker submitted a service contract to the bank.
Investigators investigating the looting of 2 billion from the Venezuelan energy company frame this transfer within a proper mechanism of money laundering and connect it with the plunder of the public company. They question the receipt that Zabala used before the bank to prove the millionaire payment, some supposed advisory services. "It is suspicious that these types of services are paid in a single installment," says a confidential report from the Andorran Financial Intelligence Unit (Uifand) last February.
EL PAÍS has not been able to obtain Zabala's version.
A court in Andorra prosecuted in 2018 for the plundering of PDVSA some thirty people, including Zabala, Farías and the former Vice Ministers of Energy of Venezuela Nervis Villalobos and Javier Alvarado. Since then, all have been accused of money laundering and collecting bribes for allegedly asking illegal commissions from companies, especially Chinese ones, which were later awarded millionaire awards from the Venezuelan oil company.
The network operated between 2007 and 2012 and resorted to laundering its loot to a convoluted skein of some thirty companies located in tax havens such as Belize or countries protected by bank secrecy, such as Switzerland or Andorra. The money allegedly stained by the corruption of the oil company converged in the deposits of the BPA, an entity intervened in 2015 for participating in an alleged laundering of funds from international criminal groups.
José María Irujo and Joaquín Gil
El País, SL
