MIAMI — A former Venezuelan national treasurer was extradited from Spain to Florida on Thursday night to face charges of accepting millions in bribes from a billionaire businessman who paid her and her husband through Miami bank accounts so the tycoon could make a fortune off the Venezuelan government’s lucrative currency exchange system.
Former Venezuelan treasurer Claudia Patricia Díaz Guillén had her first appearance in federal court in West Palm Beach on Friday morning. She was charged in 2020 with accepting the bribes from Raul Gorrín, who has had close relationships with Venezuela’s socialist presidents over the past decade. Her husband, Adrián Velásquez Figueroa, awaits extradition from Spain.
A federal grand jury charged all three defendants with foreign-corruption and money-laundering conspiracies, built upon an earlier case brought against Gorrín in 2018. The connection to Miami’s banking system is the foundation of the money-laundering case, which centers on the Venezuelan treasury’s issuance of bonds and the Gorrín-led group’s exploitation of the government’s bolivar-dollar exchange system.
