Venezuelan colonel Marino Lugo Aguilar, former Market director at the state-owned PDVSA and who had been arrested on Tuesday (16), was found dead in the penitentiary where he was being held on Wednesday afternoon (17).
Aguilar was suspected of participating in a corruption scheme in the oil sector announced last week by Venezuela's Attorney General, Tarek William Saab, and which led to the arrest of former Petroleum Minister and former Venezuelan Vice President Tareck El Aissami.
“Officials specializing in pathology, forensic medicine and criminology from the General Directorate of Support for Criminal Investigation of the Public Prosecutor's Office went to the respective detention center to reconnoitre the scene of the incident”, reported the Venezuelan Attorney General's Office in X, without detailing where Aguilar was incarcerated.
“At the scene, it was found that the deceased citizen was named Marino José Lugo Aguilar. The evidence collected by experts preliminarily establishes that the death occurred by hanging”, added the Public Ministry.
Aguilar had been accused of the crimes of appropriation or diversion of public assets, conspiracy, evasion of procedures, controls or restrictions in bidding, money laundering, treason and criminal association.
The website El Estímulo highlighted that Chavismo has a history of prisoners who were found dead in prison and later the dictatorship indicated that the cause of death was suicide.
Before Aguilar's death, Leoner Azuaje, former president of the company Cartones de Venezuela accused of corruption, died in April 2023, and Rodolfo González, “The Aviator”, who had been arrested for participating in the organization of anti-Chavista protests in 2014 and found dead in his cell in March of the following year.
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