Justification of NGO accounts: The right wing stole money and violated international laws

Published at: 28/02/2025 05:00 PM

Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) have become a tool for invading countries, with the excuse of helping to alleviate service and social development problems in communities affected by the foreign exploitation of their resources. It is through these organizations that they manage to influence communities and thus unbalance the region.

According to the nature of their creation, NGOs are independent, non-profit organizations that arise as a result of civil and popular initiatives and are generally linked to social, cultural, development or other projects that generate structural changes in certain spaces, communities, regions or countries.

However, in order to avoid the diversion of the use of resources for other purposes, studies have been carried out and entities have been created that can regulate the activities of these organizations, and especially when those responsible for requesting resources, managing them and accounting, do not have the minimum principles that allow them to carry out in an efficient and transparent manner. Thus we have the case of the diversion of funds by Juan Guaidó, Carlos Vecchio, María Corina Machado, David Smolanski, Julio Borges, Leopoldo López, Roberto Marrero, Yon Goicoechea and Miguel Pizarro, among others; who are currently being investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) due to the fraud perpetrated on funds received by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) for humanitarian aid and the forced migration of Venezuelans.

According to files released from the Venezuelan embassy in the United States, the opponent and fugitive from justice, Carlos Vecchio, would have received 116 million dollars through USAID. These funds were provided during the supposed interim government of Guaidó as assistance for citizens in Venezuela, to whom it would reach through NGOs.

The use of the resources provided by NGOs for this type of aid must be justified; that is, it must be demonstrated if these monies were used for what was requested, since there are many cases of their diversion, such as that of the supposed interim government of Guaidó, which later became known that these organizations belong to other Venezuelan politicians and family members living abroad. The files released by the embassy detail that USAID signed, in 2019, an agreement with Vecchio as ambassador to Washington, in order to receive money for humanitarian aid.

To learn about this, we reviewed some studies such as that of the National University of La Plata in Argentina, which published an article in its journal Scenarios called “New Forms of Intervention Today: NGOs as a Strategy”, by researchers Agustín Zuccaro and Mariana Santín. In it, they explained that these are presented as a new form of interference that finds its legitimacy in the media field: “It is the media that give visibility to these new actors and who promote the excessive value for the management of the social conflict characteristic of any society. They are the mass media that state these forms of participation as valid, considering that they are those where politics loses its meaning (poverty, health, education and food)”.

The researchers add that “these are spaces where we avoid discussing the history of these problems, to state that each subject is the architect of their destiny and in this sense the social and the collective are lost as a value, giving strength to the political project of capitalism, funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Foundation National for Democracy (NED)”.

Once the functioning of these organizations in several countries of the world has been evaluated and according to reviewed complaints, there are many cases where the interference of NGOs in the political structures of the country where they are located is evidenced and that they also serve to launder money, finance terrorist groups or steal them for their own benefit. This is why national, regional and international institutions have been created to monitor the use of the resources provided for their operation.

Structures for the control of resources managed by NGOs

First, the Egmont Group Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) was created, which is an international entity with 150 affiliated countries and is responsible for receiving reports from its members on suspicious money-laundering operations provided by financial institutions and other entities, analyzing them and transmitting them both to the competent authorities and to the justice service to the FIUs of other countries the information on these operations, in order to monitor, prevent and combat any illegal activity.

As a global organization, it facilitates and promotes the exchange of information, knowledge and cooperation between the FIUs of the countries that comprise it. It provides a platform for securely exchanging knowledge and financial intelligence.

Venezuela belongs to the Egmont Group through the National Financial Intelligence Unit (UNIF), which processes and analyzes Suspicious Activity Reports (RAS) submitted by the various obligated entities designated by the Organic Law against Organized Crime and funding to terrorism, in order to reveal to the Public Prosecutor's Office (MP) and law enforcement authorities, information that may evidence possible punishable acts and the identification of their perpetrators, as well as the information they require to carry out their investigations.

In the same way, in the exercise of its functions, it will process and disclose strategic information useful to the national office against organized crime and terrorist financing, to entities and bodies for control and the fulfillment of the purposes of the State in general.

This is why, in order to strengthen the system for controlling the use of resources and their diversion to activities associated with terrorism and money laundering, the National Constituent Assembly (ANC) approved the Law on the Control, Regularization, Action and Financing of Non-Governmental Organizations and related organizations, with the objective of “promoting and regulating the regime of civil organization in Venezuela as a private activity of public relevance, governed by the principles of Venezuelan law. For this purpose, a uniform system is established for its creation, registration, organization, operation, administration and development, as well as to ensure transparency in its economic and financial management, including the sources of its funding.”

This proposal was published in Official Gazette No. 6,855 extraordinary of November 15, 2024, the Law on the Supervision, Regularization, Action and Financing of Non-Governmental Organizations and Non-Profit Social Organizations, which aims to “establish the regime of constitution, registration, operation and financing of non-governmental organizations and non-profit social organizations, as forms associations oriented to the co-responsible participation of society”.

In addition, Venezuela is a member of the Caribbean Financial Action Group (GAFIC), which is a regional organization of States and Territories in the Caribbean Basin that have agreed to implement common measures against money laundering and terrorist financing. Since September 2001, GAFIC has deepened its focus on regulating financial services and charitable organizations. To this end, it created Recommendation 8, in which it warned countries about the “particular vulnerability” of NGOs to being misused to raise, move funds or provide support to terrorist organizations. In addition, GAFIC encourages countries to implement supervisory and regulatory mechanisms with the clear objective of confronting illegal activities.

The intention is then to be able to monitor and monitor the use of resources allocated to NGOs so that the precepts described in their objectives are truly fulfilled and, in this way, to eliminate the diversion of funds to be used both in destabilization activities and in terrorist actions within our country .

AMELYREN BASABE/Mazo News Team