Venezuela’s ex-oil minister arrested for alleged ties to US
Al Jazeera
Pedro Tellechea, Venezuela’s former oil minister, had resigned just days before prosecutors announced his arrest.
A former Venezuelan oil minister with alleged ties to a United States intelligence-run firm has been arrested, days after he resigned.
Pedro Tellechea, Venezuela’s onetime petroleum minister and a former state oil executive, was taken into custody on Sunday, the AFP news agency reported. Details of his arrest were announced on Monday.
Tellechea and his co-conspirators are accused of facilitating the illegal “delivery of an automated control system” to a company controlled by the US intelligence services” through Petroleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA), the state-controlled oil company he operated, Attorney General Tarek William Saab said in a statement.
Saab stated that Telelchea had violated “national sovereignty” by handing “the brain of PDVSA” over to the unnamed firm. Tellechea’s “closest collaborators” were also seized by authorities. They were not named by prosecutors.
The arrest of Tellechea, a former army colonel who served as oil minister for a few months, comes fresh on the heels of his abrupt resignation last week. On Friday, in a post on social media, he relinquished his post, citing “health problems that require my immediate attention”.
