Venezuela: Tens of thousands march in anti-government protests

[joshcryer]

69. It's a term Chavez himself has used.

Chavez saw that he had to do deals with rich Venezuelans to get things done in Venezuela after the oil workers went on strike (whether their strike had good intentions is irrelevant). He lamented that these deals were leading to a rise in "Bolivarian Oligarchs." (Chavismo is based on the concept of "Bolivarian Revolution.&quot

Al Jazeera has a good overview: http://www.aljazeera.com/news/americas/2010/05/201052242911266217.html

They exist within the import/export industry and within the contract deals done under the Fonden Fund as well as with Currency Exchange. It would have been OK had the rich people being dealt with were outside of Venezuela (if you need BP to sell you some oil rigs, OK, fine, that's not a big deal), but instead what happened were Venezuelans themselves became enriched by being part of these deals, and only through shady deals where the Venezuelan people were over charged for services rendered. The Aban Pearl comes to mind, where the Venezuelan government paid for an offshore lease of an oil rig at $1.4 billion which in reality costed $700 million. $700 million, gone, disappeared, never to be seen again.