The Spanish National Court ruled on Friday to extradite Claudia Guillen, who worked as nurse for former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, to the United States
MADRID (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 15th October, 2021) The Spanish National Court ruled on Friday to extradite Claudia Guillen, who worked as nurse for former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, to the United States.
Guillen and her husband, Adrian Velasquez Figueroa, were arrested twice in Spain. The court first approved their extradition in 2018 but then reversed the ruling after an appeal. In 2020, they were arrested again at the request of the US authorities over alleged conspiracy and money laundering, but the court let them go pending a review of the merits of the case.
"The National Court has approved the extradition of Claudia Patricia Diaz Guillen to the United States, where she is accused of money laundering and membership in a criminal organization for assisting businessman Raul Gorrin in a foreign Currency exchange that brought him hundreds of millions of Dollars in profits," the court said.
From 2008 to 2017, Gorrin, along with Guillen and Velasquez, participated in a corrupt currency exchange scheme of the Venezuelan government, the court said.
In 2018, Guillen and her husband were arrested in Spain following an extradition request by the Venezuelan authorities, who accused them of illegal enrichment, conspiracy and money laundering. The National Court of Spain initially approved the extradition, but at the appeal hearing overturned the decision due to a "possible violation of fundamental rights" in the event of extradition.
Guillen was a member of the inner circle of Venezuela's former president, who died of cancer in 2013. Her husband was the head of Chavez's security service. From 2011-2013, Guillen was the executive secretary of the public investment fund Fonden, which received more than $100 billion from the state budget. Guillen's name appears in the Panama papers, which revealed that she was illegally acquiring assets through the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca.
