The Chavista corruption scandal crosses borders. Italian authorities have requisitioned the mansion that Judge Maikel Moreno, president for four years of the Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ) and current magistrate of the Criminal Cassation Chamber, owned in the hills of Lucca, in Tuscany.

The villa, valued at six million dollars, has passed into the hands of the State Real Estate Agency, upon determining the alleged money laundering carried out for its purchase. The mansion was in the name of his wife, the model and television star Deborah Menicucci, whom he met during the Miss Venezuela contest, to which he attended as a sponsor of the contestants.

Since his accession in 2014 as a magistrate to the TSJ, Moreno became the main hammer against the opposition and against the democratic Parliament. Undoubtedly, a superjudge under the orders of Maduro. A controversial appointment from day one, since before being a judge he belonged to the political police. He was jailed and charged with murder.

This is by no means the first foreign investigation against Moreno, for whom the US justice system offers five million dollars. The authorities consider him a suspect of money laundering in other real estate purchases.

The news bomb has not caused, for the moment, either the dismissal of the judge or his arrest, despite the fact that it occurs in the midst of the anti-corruption purge within Chavismo, which really hides a power struggle between its leaders. “It is inevitable to establish the contrast. Moreno, with a mansion in Tuscany and it is said that other properties in La Romana (Dominican Republic) while teachers and other public employees fight for a decent salary that allows them to live,” criticized Andrés Velásquez , leader of the opposition La Causa R and candidate for the October primaries.

“Whoever falls falls is the Chavista slogan that they promote these days,” ironized former prosecutor Zair Mundaray, exiled today in Colombia.

So far there are more than fifty detainees, which include senior officials from the environment of former Vice President Tareck El Aissami, the military, judges and Boliburgo businessmen.

Meanwhile, the latest capture has ended the stellar political life of Hugo Cabezas, also from El Aissami’s entourage, who came to serve as a minister of the Presidency Secretariat for Hugo Chávez and for Maduro. The man who was also governor and the main person responsible for the suffocation against newspapers due to lack of paper during his tenure at the head of the Alfredo Maneiro Editorial Complex, appeared before the judge in the style that Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele has made fashionable: with orange suits, handcuffed and in large groups.

Cabezas is included in the investigation for the embezzlement in the second largest company in the country, Corporación Venezolana de Guayana (CVG), made up of a range of companies that manage natural resources, gold, diamonds, iron, bauxite and other minerals. Its until now president, Pedro Maldonado, another key player in the censorship of independent media during his time at Conatel, the state telecommunications entity, is also among the most prominent detainees.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project