Pedro Tellechea, former Minister of Industry and former president of PDVSA, is captured in Venezuela

The former Venezuelan Minister of Industry Pedro Tellechea was captured, accused of links with a “company controlled by the intelligence services” of the United States, the Prosecutor’s Office of that country reported this Monday.

Tellechea, who was Minister of Petroleum and president of the state-owned PDVSA until August 2024, He was arrested early Sunday, October 20, along with “his most immediate collaborators” for, among other reasons, “the delivery” of PDVSA’s automated control system “to a company controlled by the US intelligence services.”according to a statement from the Public Ministry. The document does not mention other names.

This 48-year-old soldier He had assumed the position of Minister of Petroleum in March 2023 with the promise of “cleaning up” this sector after a corruption scandal that ended with his predecessor, the imprisoned Tareck El Aissami, which according to estimates cost the Caribbean country about 17,000 million dollars. The now detained man was also named president of PDVSA in January 2023.

El Aissami was not an isolated case in corruption investigations related to crude oil, vital for the Venezuelan economy. Rafael Ramírez, Minister of Petroleum between 2002 and 2014 and former president of PDVSA from 2004 to 2014, is a fugitive in Italy, while Eulogio del Pino and Nelson Martínez, who also held these two positions, were arrested. Martínez died in prison.

Pedro Tellechea, after leaving the Ministry of Petroleum in August, was appointed Minister of Industry. His successor in the energy portfolio was Vice President Delcy Rodríguez.

On Friday, October 18, President Nicolás Maduro appointed Colombian businessman Alex Saab -accused of being a front man for the leader of the Venezuelan regime and released by the United States in December 2023 in a prisoner exchange- as Minister of Industry.

Tellechea, on social networks, said that he resigned due to “health problems” that required his “immediate attention.”