Spanish judicial authorities have secured the arrest in Qatar of Said Aurelio Cabrera Abraham, a former Venezuelan military counterintelligence officer accused of orchestrating complex money-laundering schemes linked to Venezuela’s state oil company PDVSA. According to reporting by El País, Cabrera was detained by Qatari police on December 9 at the request of Spain’s National Court, which has been investigating him for years over alleged corruption and the diversion of millions of euros in public funds.
Cabrera, a 51-year-old native of Caracas, is a former close collaborator of Hugo Armando Carvajal, known as “El Pollo,” the former head of Venezuelan military intelligence who is currently imprisoned in the United States and has become a key figure in U.S. narcoterrorism cases against President Nicolás Maduro. Sources cited by El País say Cabrera worked under Carvajal at Venezuela’s General Directorate of Military Counterintelligence, placing him deep inside the country’s security apparatus during the height of chavismo.
The Spanish investigation focuses on at least two alleged fraud operations carried out between 2013 and 2014. One involved the purchase of vehicles for a PDVSA subsidiary at nearly double their market value, generating large illicit profits. The second centered on a contract to install a video surveillance system, through which more than six million euros were allegedly siphoned into accounts under Cabrera’s control.
Despite maintaining a low public profile and leaving behind few photographs, Cabrera appears in a 2014 video alongside senior political figures welcoming Carvajal at Caracas airport after his brief detention in Aruba. In the same footage, Cilia Flores, Maduro’s wife, can be seen among the delegation, while Cabrera is shown organizing the security convoy.
Cabrera obtained Spanish nationality in 2021 and had established himself in Spain years earlier, purchasing a luxury apartment for one million euros in Madrid’s Salamanca district. Investigators believe he moved more permanently to Spain after authorities in the Dominican Republic, where he had been living, opened a money-laundering case against him.
Spain’s National Court has pursued Cabrera for nearly five years, suspecting that he used Bariven, a PDVSA procurement subsidiary, to channel funds abroad through a web of shell companies. In April 2024, police carried out coordinated raids in Spain and Portugal, arresting two suspects and searching multiple properties, including one linked to Cabrera in Portugal. He was not located at the time, prompting the issuance of an international arrest warrant that has now led to his capture in Qatar.
Court documents cited by El País detail evidence that Cabrera was serving at Venezuela’s Defense Ministry during the period in question, a key factor in establishing the alleged corruption offenses. Spanish police uncovered email chains from March 2013 referring to Cabrera as an official liaison for German doctors who traveled to Caracas following the death of President Hugo Chávez. The correspondence describes Cabrera coordinating logistics and transmitting instructions on embalming procedures to Cuban pathologists, reinforcing claims that he was acting in an official capacity.
The vehicle fraud scheme allegedly involved Roberto Esteban Rincón, a Venezuelan businessman convicted in the United States in 2016 for bribing PDVSA officials, and his son José Roberto Rincón. Spanish investigators say the younger Rincón replicated the same criminal methods in Spain, using a U.S.-based company to sell vehicles to PDVSA at inflated prices. Documentation seized by police shows that 17 vehicles were sold for more than €2.4 million, yielding profits of over €750,000.
Investigators also point to social and financial ties linking Cabrera and the Rincón family, including records from a lavish birthday celebration in Aruba attended by both Cabrera and Carvajal, with hotel bills exceeding €79,000.
The second alleged scheme involved the creation of Plymouth Overseas Limited, a company Cabrera co-founded with Carmen Julia Pérez, a Venezuelan national who later became a Spanish citizen. The firm secured a €68 million PDVSA contract for a video surveillance system despite having no track record. Authorities detected transfers of nearly €6.9 million to Spain, ending up in an account at a Portuguese subsidiary of La Caixa to which Cabrera had access.
Spanish investigators say the contract raised multiple red flags: the company’s recent creation, Cabrera’s role as the main interlocutor despite being a minority shareholder, and the rapid movement of funds through newly created subsidiaries. Information provided by Carvajal while he was imprisoned in Madrid awaiting extradition to the United States helped revive and strengthen the case, according to judicial sources.
Cabrera is currently being held in Qatar pending formal extradition proceedings. Spanish authorities expect that once the process is completed, he will be transferred to Spain to face questioning by investigators, marking a significant breakthrough in one of the country’s most far-reaching corruption cases tied to Venezuela’s oil industry.
