Miami Luxury Yacht Lawsuit Unveils Venezuelan Money Laundering Network

A federal judge in Miami dismissed a lawsuit by two Venezuelan brothers seeking to recover their luxury yacht after finding links to the Maduro regime and money laundering activities.

MiamiDiario Editorial Staff

This week, federal district judge Federico Moreno said Luis and Ignacio Oberto’s Panamanian company, Violet Advisors S.A., no longer existed when the brothers filed their lawsuit in April to claim the yacht Leonardo II.

“Our clients are delighted to be safe in possession of their boat, now named M/V Nicole (…) I was impressed that Judge Moreno’s instinct that the charge against us was false proved to be true,” Miami attorney, William Norris, told the Miami Herald on Thursday.

The legal battle began in April when the two wealthy Venezuelan brothers said their company bought the twin-engine yacht Leonardo II for $2 million in 2013 and then brought it to South Florida, where they claimed it was stolen in March from a pier north of Miami Beach.

The judge’s decision favors a Hialeah company, Excellent Auto Group, which claims to have purchased the 98-foot blue-and-white yacht for $200,000 from Violet Advisors in 2015, so it can keep it.

The brothers, who until recently lived in a couple of beachfront condos in Miami Beach, are under investigation for alleged corruption and money laundering activities totaling $4 billion, extending from Venezuela to Switzerland and South Florida.

With information from Primer Informe

Translated by Aleuzenev Nogales

You may also be interested in:

How does internal ventilation affect the spread of coronavirus

Facebook removed accounts that sought to influence public opinion in Latin America

Good news! New life saving symptom of covid discovered at University of Miami