Ortega's personal liability has long been hypothesized as one of the the stumbling blocks. Article 109 gives credence to that assumption...

Gaceta Oficial
Of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela
YEAR CXXXIVMES
III Caracas, Friday December 22, 2006. 5,833 Extraordinary
The National Assembly of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela
Decrees
Organic Law of Environment

TITLE IX MEASURES AND ENVIRONMENTAL SANCTIONS

Chapter I General Dispositions Sanctions

Article 108

In execution of this Law, should be dictated the adequate administrative and penal norms in guarantee of the legal goods protected by the same one. The corresponding pecuniary sanctions will be even in ten thousand tax units (10,000 U.T.); and even in ten years of prison if consistieren in privative griefs of liberty, should to do the obsession according to the greater gravity of the punishable fact, to the conditions of the same one and to the circumstances of its commission, maintaining the duty proportionality and adaptation with the supposed one in fact.

Nullity of the administrative acts autorizatorios

Article 109

The permits, authorizations, approvals or other administrative act, contrary to
the principles set forth in this Act or its regulations, shall be considered null and may not
generate rights for their recipients and civil servants that give
liable to disciplinary, administrative, criminal or civil, as the case may be.

Reach of the sanctions to private

Article 110

The imposed sanctions to the individuals predicted in the environmental laws, they will be applied without damage of the civil or penal actions to that place there be, neither of the consecrated sanctions in other laws.

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