MADRID (TASS): The Spanish National Court of Justice has approved the extradition to the United States of Claudia Patricia Diaz, a former nurse of ex-Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. This is stated in the press release of the legal instance circulated on Friday.
According to the statement, the court “approved the extradition of the former state treasurer of Venezuela Claudia Patricia Diaz.” The United States is seeking her extradition on charges of “money laundering and [membership in] a criminal organization for assisting businessman Raul Gorrin in a foreign currency exchange conspiracy that earned him hundreds of millions of dollars,” the court said.
The woman was detained in Spain last December at the request of the United States.
Earlier, the court of the Pyrenean kingdom refused to extradite the ex-nurse of Chavez to Venezuela. Diaz courted the former president until his death. According to the media, it was Chavez who once appointed her responsible for the national treasury department and the secretariat of the development fund.
After Chavez’s death, Diaz and her husband left Caracas and went first to the Dominican Republic and then to Spain.
Hugo Chavez led Venezuela from 1999 to 2013. In June 2011, Cuban experts confirmed that he had a cancerous tumor. In Havana, he underwent a course of radiation and chemotherapy, underwent several operations, but was unable to cope with the disease. On March 5, 2013, Chavez died in Caracas.
