Report of the Special Senate Commission of Inquiry into the PetroCaribe Fund

The report of the Senate special commission of inquiry chaired by Senator Evalière Beauplan into the use of the PetroCaribe fund, covering September 2008 to September 2016: two presidencies, five governments and the thirteen Council of Ministers resolutions adopted between September 20, 2008 and January 6, 2016 that authorized spending from the fund. The commission traces the mechanism itself, under which the Bureau de Monétisation des Programmes d'Aide au Développement buys Venezuelan petroleum products and resells them to distributing companies on credit terms, then follows the money from the resolutions to the contracts signed with individual firms.

It works from the fund's books, an analytical review of the accounts by an audit firm, and the supervision firms' reports, and it sets out the anomalies and irregularities it considers significant contract by contract: awards made sole-source without the required approval, unit prices well above what another supplier charged for the same item, receivables overstated, and disbursements the commission could not tie to a delivered output. Its stated purpose is to confirm, correct or restore the facts presented in the first report and to establish the responsibility of those involved, so it names firms and officials as well as reporting aggregates.