United States v. Claudia Patricia Diaz Guillen

Claudia Diaz Guillen, the former National Treasurer of Venezuela, and her husband, Adrian Jose Velásquez, were each sentenced to 15 years in prison for their roles in a multibillion-dollar bribery and money laundering scheme.  Diaz Guillen and Velásquez accepted and laundered over $136 million in bribes from co-conspirator Raúl Gorrin Belisario, a Venezuelan billionaire businessman who owned Globovision news network. Gorrin allegedly paid bribes to Díaz, including through Velásquez, to obtain access to purchase bonds from the Venezuela National Treasury at a favorable exchange rate, resulting in hundreds of millions of dollars of profit.  Díaz and Velásquez were each convicted after trial in December 2022 of money laundering offenses with specified unlawful activities of violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and certain offenses relating to bribery of a public official contrary to Venezuelan law.