Bernardo Tadeo Arosio Hobaica is no amateur businessman: he is the perfect mold of the contractor who turned friendships and political favors into multimillion-dollar contracts, luxury properties, and tailor-made concessions. Son of engineer Jhon Arosio Maal, a high-level executive at the Sambil group and founder of ATB Constructores, he entered the family real estate business alongside his brother Tadeo Arosio, building more than 500 apartments and boutique hotels in prime locations. That façade was enough for him to make the leap — with the right connections — from blueprints to Venezuela’s Orinoco Oil Belt.
The door was opened through social circles. His wife, Hannelly Quintero, struck up a close friendship with Rudy Amer de El Aissami, wife of then–oil minister Tareck El Aissami, now imprisoned for corruption. Out of that domestic relationship came a business with nothing to do with engineering or construction: the operation of dollarized gas stations under the Pit Stop brand, alongside other allies from El Aissami’s inner circle. It was a constant flow of cash in foreign currency with astronomical profit margins, sustained at the expense of labor exploitation complaints: employees working 14-hour shifts without benefits, under veiled threats of dismissal if they complained.
El Aissami’s favor didn’t end with gasoline. In 2021, Arosio stormed into the oil sector as the main contractor at Petro San Félix, overseeing recovery and maintenance work at upgrading plants. Without any technical background, he relied on a payment-in-kind scheme: PDVSA delivered crude oil shipments to POES International LTD —a UK-registered technical consulting firm— in exchange for these alleged services. The real middleman was Prodata Energy, registered in Arosio’s name and used to channel gas exports to Colombia, with Chilean businessman Jorge Jara Salas as a partner. Both companies shared offices on the 14th floor of the Torre BOD (now Banco Nacional de Crédito) in La Castellana, Caracas, separated by a makeshift wall to fake independence.
The same business tandem monopolized part of the logistics for the Antonio Ricaurte binational gas pipeline, connecting Maracaibo to Colombia’s La Guajira peninsula. Contracts were secured with the political blessing of El Aissami and PDVSA Gas officials, who granted them permits and exclusivity. The gas business expanded to contracts with joint ventures such as Petromonagas, Petrocedeño and Sinovensa, all majority-owned by PDVSA.
At the same time, Arosio expanded his real estate footprint to areas where the law should be merciless: Los Roques. He and his brother Tadeo are accused of owning one of eight luxury constructions built just meters from the Gran Roque airstrip, in a zone protected by the National Park. An Armando.info report on the enclave describes how environmental permits were fast-tracked for a select group of businessmen with direct ties to the government, including Arosio, who obtained the land and licenses without any public bidding.
ATB Constructores, his flagship company, didn’t escape scandal. Court files revealed payments to municipal officials in Baruta —channeled through Poes Internacional— to obtain occupancy permits, cadastral certificates, and zoning variances between 2018 and 2022. The goal: to push forward projects such as the Torre 908 and other high-profile developments in eastern Caracas.
Meanwhile, his personal life fed gossip headlines. Past relationships with figures like Osmariel Villalobos and connections to the Miss Venezuela world reinforced his image as a “high-flying businessman” in Caracas’s jet set. His wife’s friendship with Rudy Amer de El Aissami was both the key to his entry into oil contracts and a shield that kept him untouchable while his benefactor’s corruption network operated unchecked.
That shield broke in March 2023, when the PDVSA-Crypto mega-case exploded. Detained alongside Alejandro Arroyo and Jesús Salazar, Arosio was accused of participating in a scheme that caused PDVSA losses of over $13.3 billion during El Aissami’s tenure. Investigators documented how POES International received crude shipments as payment and how Prodata Energy managed gas export contracts to Colombia that circumvented international sanctions.
In April 2024, the outlet Cuentas Claras Digital revealed that Arosio, Arroyo, and Salazar were granted house arrest after turning on Tareck El Aissami. Today, he serves his sentence from home — far from the Pit Stop stations, the Torre BOD offices, and the private beaches of Los Roques — but with a fortune whose origins are marked by political favors, opaque contracts, and the systematic use of the state as a personal loot chest.
Because the case of Bernardo Arosio is not the story of a visionary entrepreneur — it’s the story of an operator who turned personal relationships, with names and surnames, into the raw material for a private empire bankrolled with public money.
@lombardoven Hannelly Quintero descubrió que su marido, Bernardo Arosio Hobaica, usaba sus permisos médicos para verse con Osmariel Villalobos en un consultorio de la clínica El Ávila. En el pasado, Arosio había sido novio también de Gaby Espino #fyp #venezuela ♬ Perro Mujeriego - Nacho