Tareck El Aissami challenges Venezuela corruption trial

Tareck El Aissami arrived at a closed hearing in Caracas in a wheelchair, thinner than in his years as a regime strongman, wearing a light-blue prison uniform. According to El País, the former Venezuelan vice president and former oil minister is now the central defendant in the PDVSA-Crypto case, described as the largest corruption investigation opened in Venezuela in two decades. The file involves dozens of defendants and billions of dollars missing, and the proceedings are being held on the top floor of the Palace of Justice under armed guard, with sessions running into the early morning.

El Aissami’s courtroom strategy has been to turn the trial into a dispute over who inside the state gets blamed for a sanctions-evasion system that the state itself built. El País reports that prosecutors say the scheme was designed from within government to bypass US restrictions, a reminder that sanctions do not simply block commerce; they also create a premium for intermediaries who can move money and barrels outside the formal system. Once that premium exists, it attracts officials, contractors, and fixers who treat state companies as an off-ledger bank—until the political winds shift and the same network becomes evidence.

In his testimony, El Aissami alleged that officials from the Attorney General’s Office extorted him and demanded money in exchange for removing him from the case. He also described enforced disappearance, prolonged isolation, denial of medical care, and being stripped and drugged during interrogation, naming the attorney general at the time, Tarek William Saab, in the account. A prosecutor was temporarily removed after El Aissami accused him of demanding a video confession, and his defence has sought conditional release on medical grounds, citing a herniated disc and a blood clot.

The trial’s opacity is part of the story. The hearings are closed to the public, the case file is kept under lock and key, and an exiled former prosecutor, Zair Mundaray, is following events through sources inside the courts, according to El País. El Aissami has demanded public sessions—arguing that if the case is “the biggest theft in history” it should also be the most transparent—while simultaneously pointing to other schemes involving officials close to Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores.

A man who once oversaw Venezuela’s police forces is now asking the same system for medical care and open hearings. The Palace of Justice is still guarded by armed men, but the defendant has changed.