While many former allies of the Venezuelan regime face sanctions or ongoing criminal investigations, Armando “Coco” Capriles has managed to keep a remarkably low profile — despite his deep ties to the financial networks that enabled the looting of the Venezuelan state.
The grandson of influential media mogul Miguel Ángel Capriles Ayala, Coco did not inherit the publishing empire, but rather the instinct for aligning with power. Over the past two decades, he transformed from a member of the Caracas elite into a financial operator embedded in the darkest corners of the chavista economy.
At the height of Venezuela’s dual exchange rate and the era of structured financial notes, Capriles became a key player. He worked alongside figures like Nelson Merentes, José Gregorio Vielma Mora, and Rafael Ramírez, navigating the distortion-rich financial landscape to accumulate enormous wealth. According to the Suisse Secrets leak, Capriles held over 140 million Swiss francs in Credit Suisse accounts between 2014 and 2016 — peak years for illicit capital flows.
His name also surfaced around the scandal of Francisco Illarramendi, a U.S.-convicted financial advisor who defrauded more than $700 million from PDVSA pension funds. Capriles, along with Moris Beracha, Diego Marynberg, and Gilberto Morales, formed part of a network of financial operators tied to Venezuelan corruption, with operations stretching from Switzerland to the United States.
Real Estate, Reputation, and Reinvention in Spain
Beyond offshore accounts, Capriles capitalized on overpriced sales of buildings to the Venezuelan state — including the Centro Capriles and Torre Provincial — and engaged in private deals with sanctioned figures like Raúl Gorrín, who admitted to selling him a yacht for over $280,000.
But Capriles's ambitions were never limited to money. In recent years, he has moved to Spain, where he’s focused on rebranding himself and his family within the European nobility. His wife, Corina Mileo Trotta, comes from Spanish aristocratic lineage, and together they launched a 2024 legal campaign to claim the Marquessate of Irache for their daughter, Camila Capriles Mileo, based on supposed ties to Christopher Columbus’s bloodline.
Camila, now 18, lives between Madrid, Paris, and New York, and studies Music Industry Studies at Loyola University in New Orleans. She travels aboard a private Gulfstream G-450 jet and represents a new generation of Latin American elites: young, globally educated, well-connected, and detached from their family's controversial fortune. In 2021, she and her family even flew privately to Abu Dhabi to attend King Juan Carlos I’s birthday, accompanied by members of Spain’s nobility.
Private Jets, Offshore Structures, and Gold
Capriles has operated largely in the shadows, relying on shell companies such as Sunny Selirpac and Monina Inversiones — both based in Madrid, with declared capital exceeding €19 million. These firms function as platforms to protect family wealth in Europe and avoid exposure to legal scrutiny.
But perhaps the most symbolic asset tied to Capriles is the N118T, a private jet that for years flew routes between Venezuela, the U.S., and the Caribbean. Though formally held by intermediaries, the aircraft appears linked to Capriles’s network and used during critical financial operations. These discreet air corridors have also connected Capriles to Venezuelan banker Juan Carlos Escotet, founder of Banesco and Abanca, with whom he has shared financial ventures and offshore vehicles.
According to Suisse Secrets and other investigations, accounts linked to Escotet’s circle intersect with Capriles’s network — indicating a shared ecosystem designed to move, shelter, and launder chavista-era fortunes far from public oversight.
Also closely tied to Capriles is Antonio Luis González Morales, a Venezuelan oil trader implicated in international sanction-evasion networks. González Morales manages fleets of tankers — the so-called “shadow fleet” — that transport sanctioned oil for Venezuela, Russia, and Iran using front companies registered in Seychelles. Alongside Capriles, he has been involved in real estate deals in Florida and broader financial structuring designed to evade regulation and taxation.
Blood Gold and Fake Invoices
Capriles’s name has also surfaced in a sophisticated gold laundering operation involving intermediaries in Mali, Turkey, and the UAE. Working with French financier Olivier Couriol and the firm Noor Capital, Capriles reportedly played a role in facilitating gold sales on behalf of the Venezuelan Central Bank, circumventing sanctions through falsified documents and off-the-books cargo.
The scheme relied on forged papers from Wassoul’Or, a Malian mining company run by Aliou Boubacar Diallo, to mask the true origins of Venezuelan gold extracted from illegal mines. This gold was then routed through Turkey and monetized via TC Ziraat Bankasi, among others.
Capriles allegedly acted as a broker and facilitator, helping transform illicit state-owned assets into legitimate holdings overseas, in a maneuver blending geopolitics, organized crime, and financial engineering.
The Quiet Oligarch
What’s most striking about Armando “Coco” Capriles is not just his accumulation of wealth or access to power — but his ability to remain untouched. While many of his contemporaries have been sanctioned, arrested, or named in legal proceedings, Capriles continues to operate in the shadows, protected by layers of lawyers, proxies, and tax havens.
He embodies the evolution of Venezuela’s post-chavista elite: no longer chasing political offices or business contracts, but ancestral titles, private banks, and aristocratic dinners. He has traded oil ministers for marquesses, and media headlines for diplomatic immunity.
But behind the rebranding, the origin of his fortune remains the same: systemic corruption. No matter how many castles or coats of arms one acquires, the money still comes from the same source — and the trail, no matter how well hidden, remains.
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