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Weekly Report - 29 October 2015 (WR-15-43)

VENEZUELA: The Whistleblowers

Franklin Nieves, one of the two lead prosecutors in the trial of the Venezuelan opposition leader, Leopoldo López, has fled the country for the US with his family and now alleges that he acted under pressure from his superiors, specifically the attorney general Luisa Ortega, to build a false case against López. This bombshell revelation (long alleged by supporters of López) has put the government led by President Nicolás Maduro under fresh international scrutiny just weeks before critical mid-term national legislative elections in which the opposition is hoping to make important inroads against the ruling party’s congressional dominance. Nieves is just the latest Venezuelan whistleblower to make allegations against the Maduro government; and there is some indication that the evidence provided by these former insiders is helping various US judicial authorities as they slowly but surely construct cases of their own – presumably much more watertight – against key figures in the Bolivarian Revolution. The question is how and when US authorities might choose to use this leverage.

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