Thursday 24 March 2011

From Russia, with love: 7 billion dollars in weapons for more underdevelopment


This is the kind of details you don't get in Venezuelan newspapers: the Venezuelan government spent 400 million dollars this winter to set up a Venezuelan-Russian bank.  Venezuela's FONDEN was the one providing the dosh after it got the green light from the Russian Antimonopoly Organisation to buy 49.9% of the shares of Evrofinanse Mosnarbanka (Еврофинанс Моснарбанка). According to Kommersant, Rosbalt dixit, the Venezuelan government will use  these shares to form a package that will constitute 49% of the capital for this new bank. Putin was pressing since 2006 for Chávez to take this step.

Do you know of any discussion about this at the previous National Assembly? Do you know if the alternative forces can demand the government to backtrack on this?

According to the paper, the main reason for setting up this new bank is to  process the deals between Venezuela and Rosobonosexport. Rosobonoexport is the company delivering weapons to Hugo's military. Venezuela is the second best client for Russian's Lords of War, after India.

Russia could be providing about 7.5 billion dollars in loans for the Venezuelan military to buy toys with.

Do you have any idea why we need to spend so many billions in buying weapons? Does Hugo want to Gaddafy us? How many schools could Venezuela create in Guárico and Portuguesa with those billions? How many roads and projects for developing agriculture in Monagas could be financed with this money?

I wonder if Rosobonosexport has been very-very grateful to some of Venezuela's boliburgueses.

Ps. talking about the dirty business of war, blogger and journalist Steven Bodzin sent me this very interesting link. I will be talking more about this topic.

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