Bogotá, May 9, 2024—Venezuelan authorities should retract their allegations of attempted bribery against the investigative news website Armando.Info and stop harassing its journalists, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Thursday.
During a televised news conference on Tuesday, Attorney General Tarek William Saab, an ally of authoritarian President Nicolás Maduro, claimed that Armando.Info was part of a “media structure” that was using extortion to wage a dirty war against the government.
Saab said that Armando.Info had demanded bribes from Tareck El Aissami during his term as oil minister from 2020 to 2023. In exchange, Saab alleged that Armando.Info promised to soften or kill negative articles about him, his allies, and the state-run oil company, and to criticize El Assiami’s government rivals. El Aissami, who served as vice president before becoming oil minister, was arrested on corruption charges last month.
“Venezuelan authorities must halt their crusade against independent media. The retaliation against Armando.info’s investigations into top-level government corruption is intolerable,” said Carlos Martínez de la Serna, CPJ’s program director, in New York. “The harassment must cease, and authorities must permit all journalists at Armando.info to pursue their vital work without restrictions.”
In a statement posted on X, Armando.Info denied the allegations and described them as a preemptive strike by authorities ahead of a PBS documentary, set to air on May 14, highlighting Armando.Info’s efforts to expose government corruption in Venezuela.
“This is a very clumsy and improvised maneuver to try to discredit Armando.Info, intimidate its journalists, stop the broadcast of the documentary, and to silence us,” the outlet said in the statement.
Armando.Info was founded 10 years ago in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, by Ewald Scharfenberg. In 2018, Scharfenberg, editor Roberto Deniz, and two more of the website’s journalists fled Venezuela after they were sued for criminal defamation over stories published in 2017 that alleged corruption within a state-run food distribution program during a time of widespread food shortages. In 2021, a criminal court in Caracas issued an arrest warrant for Deniz on charges of “inciting hate,” which is punishable by up to 20 years in prison.
In a phone interview, Scharfenberg told CPJ that Saab’s allegations would not stop Armando.Info from publishing its investigations. However, he said he was worried that government authorities could harass relatives of exiled Armando.Info journalists who live in Venezuela, as well as the website’s five Caracas-based reporters.
The accusations against Armando.Info come amid rising tensions in Venezuela ahead of a July 28 presidential election in which Maduro is seeking a third six-year term.
The Caracas-based Institute for Press and Society, which promotes freedom of information and expression, said in a report last week that government officials had closed 11 radio stations between January and April, publicly stigmatized journalists and media outlets, and used the legal system to harass reporters.
There was no response to CPJ’s calls and emails seeking comment from the Attorney General’s office.