one of the lynchpins of the system was rafael ramírez he served as minister of energy under chavez andat the same time as president of the pay davis up oil company for years his loyalty to chavez allowed the president to dip into the country's petro dollars at will without parliamentary oversight or accountability. java's had nearly unchecked access to oil revenues. some went to fund far reaching social programs but billions also vanished into private coffers. today at the epic as both his friends and foes called him has gone into hiding in exile. me. as you said the symptoms i just made the petroleum exports brought in about $700000000000.00 over the 10 years i was in office. went completely by my calculation 480000000000 of that they came from taxes we got the rest from the producers petroleum sales will solve 700000000000 this is me the big question is you number one of the state do with that money so that's the big question going 2nd theory living up to the. venezuela's political to climb the gun on the president to go. chavez. his economic policies pave the way to a morass of corr