Wednesday, September 24, 2008

All hell breaks out in "cat fight" between Environment Minister Yubiri Ortega de Carrizales and Vice Minister Merly Garcia...

VHeadline Venezuela News reports: Sources, who do not wish to be identified, at Venezuela's Ministry of the Environment & Renewable Natural Resources (MinAmb) say that "all hell has broken out and that there has been a substantial cat fight" between Minister Yubiri Ortega de Carrizales and her deputy, Vice Minister Merly Garcia" in the aftermath of the September 10 publication in the Gaceta Oficial (Legal Gazette) of a notice in which Ortega de Carrizales surprisingly rescinded Garcia's authority to sign official documents, including the now-infamous final permit for Crystallex International to begin work at the Las Cristinas site of South America's largest gold resource.

According to the insider information, the current situation is "explosive" with even more fuel added to the fire by Rodolfo Sanz international telephone call from Beijing in China to immediately dismiss Lt. Col, Hector Herrera Jimenez who was unilaterally appointed (over Sanz' head as president and CEO of the Venezuelan Guayana Corporation-CVG) some 12 days previously as president of the state-owned industrial conglomerate's aluminum subsidiary, CVG-Bauxilum, by none other than Environment Minister Ortega's husband, Vice President Ramon Carrizalez (pictured left).

That was precisely while Minister Sanz was out of the country, away in South Africa with President Hugo Chavez Frias negotiating important economic deals with South Africa's then-President Mbeke.

Information from a delegate to the Chinese-Venezuelan negotiations claims that Sanz (pictured right) dropped out of the Beijing negotiations, Monday, threatening to resign from both the Mibam Ministry and the overall presidency of the CVG if Vice President Carrizales' appointee to the presidency of troubled CVG-Bauxilum was allowed to stand.

Herrera Jimenez has since disappeared off all media radar screens and is said to have flown to the United States on urgent "family business."

Back home in Caracas, perplexed Mibam and MinAmb officials are waiting for another major busy-up between Sanz and Chavez on the one side and the Carrizales spouses on the other and it is expected that there will be a round of Cabinet musical chairs this coming weekend shortly after the presidential jet returns to home base at Caracas Simon Bolivar international airport at Maiquetia on Venezuela's Caribbean coast.

VHeadline Venzuela News
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