Venezuela issues arrest warrant for TV boss critical of Chavez

Published on Saturday 12 June 2010 19:55

VENEZUELAN authorities have issued an arrest warrant for the owner of a television channel that takes a critical line against President Hugo Chávez.

Intelligence agents arrived at a home owned by Guillermo Zuloaga seeking to arrest him and one of his sons last week, but their whereabouts were unknown.

Zuloaga is president and majority shareholder of Globovision, the country's only remaining channel that is stridently opposed to Chavez.

A court issued the warrant for the businessman and his son, also named Guillermo, citing accusations of illegally keeping 24 new Toyota sports utility vehicles stored at a home owned by Zuloaga. Along with his son, Zuloaga is charged with usury and conspiracy.

Zuloaga has denied wrongdoing, saying the charges were trumped up in an attempt to intimidate him. Police and soldiers raided his property and found the vehicles in May last year, but there had been little action in the case for months.

The arrest warrant came a week after Chvez publicly lamented that Zuloaga remained free.

"They caught that man with a bunch of cars in his house and that's a crime – hoarding. And he's free and he has a television channel," Chvez said in a televised speech. He called it a case of "structural weakness" in Venezuela's legal system.

Zuloaga, who also owns several car dealerships, has said he stored the cars on the property for safekeeping after one of his dealerships was robbed.

He is also facing other accusations in court, including making false and offensive remarks about Chavez at a meeting of the Inter American Press Association in Aruba.

The press association's president, Alejandro Aguirre, condemned the latest action as political persecution.

"Once again it's been shown that in Venezuela there's no independence of powers, an essential value of democracy," Aguirre said.