Venezuelan ex-official detained in Spain on US warrant

Spanish police arrested a former deputy Venezuelan energy minister Thursday on a U.S. warrant for alleged involvement in $1 billion bribery scheme involving Venezuela's state-run oil company PDVSA.

Nervis Villalobos was arrested in Madrid by a police unit specialized in money laundering crimes on an indictment from federal prosecutors in Houston, a spokesman for Spain's Civil Guard told The Associated Press. The spokesman, who wasn't authorized to be named and spoke on condition of anonymity, said that as part of the ongoing sting Luis Carlos de Leon, a former official at a state-run electric company in Caracas, was also taken into custody along with a third, unnamed person who was an executive at PDVSA's procurement unit, Bariven.

Villalobos would be the first senior ex-official detained as part of a wide-ranging U.S. probe into corruption at PDVSA that has already led 10 businessmen to plead guilty for their roles in kickbacks to Venezuelan officials. In 2015, the U.S. Treasury Department accused a bank in Andorra of laundering some $2 billion stolen from PDVSA.

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