02/07/09
Comptroller Russian: Venezuela has sanctioned more than 800 corrupt officials in the last nine years

The Office of the Comptroller General of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela (CGR) has sanctioned and removed from office more than 800 corrupt officials during the last nine years.
 
Comptroller General, Clodosbaldo Russian, in a statement to the Bolivarian News Agency (ABN), added that “the CGR had never before sanctioned as many people as we have in the last nine years.”
 
Accordingly, he refuted the report presented by the “most right-wing sector of the World Bank, which, with neither scientific rigor nor methodology, placed Venezuela at the top of the list of most corrupt nations in the hemisphere.”
 
Comptroller Russian stated that those reports are made two to four times a year with the audacity to name Haiti the most corrupt nation in the world, followed by Venezuela.
 
“This does not even make sense. This decision has been made by those gentlemen in retaliation against Venezuela. Due to the fact that, in the past nine years, this country has been politically independent and has not been tethered to the World Bank or any other international financier’s bank,” he stressed.
 
The comptroller emphasized that Venezuela joined the Inter-American Convention against Corruption in 1996. Likewise, Venezuela has the most advanced constitution on the planet in reference to the defense of public assets and is also a signatory of the United Nations Convention against Corruption.
 
Russian also recalled that Venezuela was one of the countries that proposed not signing contracts with companies established in tax havens, and as such the extradition of corrupt officials and retaliation of capital.
 
  “Venezuela has approved the Law against Corruption, an Organic Law of the Comptroller General of the Republic and of the National System of Fiscal Control. Moreover, there is a branch of National Power that does not exist in other countries, which is the Citizen Power (Public Prosecutor, Ombudsperson, and Comptroller)” he said.
 
Bolivarian News Agency (ABN), Press Unit of the Embassy of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela to the United States