Miami, May 7 (RHC)-- Venezuelan Juan José Rendón, head of the Strategy Committee of opposition leader Juan Guaidó, admitted that he signed a contract and paid $50,000 U$D to the contractor Silvercorp USA, which organized and carried out the invasion attempt on the Venezuelan coast, aimed at kidnapping President Nicolás Maduro.
In an interview with CNN, Rendón confessed that the contract called for "exploration" to determine if there was "the possibility of capturing and handing over to justice members of Maduro's regime" with "accusations and arrest warrants."
In the document referred to by Rendón, his signature appears along with that of Juan Guaidó, opposition deputy Sergio Vergara and Silvercorp representative Jordan Goudreau. However, the political strategist denied the veracity of the signature of the opponent and self-proclaimed president of Venezuela.
Rendón assured that only seven pages of the eight have been shown, of this document that would have another 42 pages of annexes, where "the exploratory purpose" of the text would be explained. "It was part of a preliminary agreement that was not carried out."
Although the attempted attack took place early Sunday morning, Rendón said that in the end the "green light" was not given to the actions foreseen in the document. He claimed that they decided not to take the services of the contractor because of the suspicion that information could be leaked, since Clíver Alcalá, a former member of the Venezuelan government and a fugitive from justice in that country, was in charge of coordinating the training in Colombia of a group of 60 mercenaries who would participate in actions to depose Maduro and carry out selective attacks on high officials of his government.
The planning and organization of the failed intervention attempt has been publicly assumed by Jordan Goudreau himself, through a video that went viral. The version was corroborated by Luke Denman, one of the Americans detained by the Venezuelan authorities after the incursion attempt -- which left 17 others detained and eight killed -- who said that they were also planning to take over the airport in Caracas to allow the entry of an aircraft that would take Nicolas Maduro to the United States, once he was kidnapped.
Rendón, who is also known for advising the political campaigns of many former and current Latin American presidents, including Juan Manuel Santos in Colombia, Chile's Sebastián Piñera, Mexico's Enrique Peña Nieto, and Honduras' Juan Orlando Hernández and Porfirio Lobo, called Goudreau "crazy" and "a suicide operation" from which Guaidó has dissociated himself.
Regarding the payment of the $50,000 he claims to have given to Silvercorp, Goudreau maintains that he was not paid anything. The ex-Green Beret also mentioned that the initial contract was valued at $211 million.
In the interview, the Guaidó official admits that meetings have been held to determine the options for deposing Maduro, among which were "an eventual action to capture people" on charges of persecution, human rights violations, and drug trafficking.
Similarly, Rendón has confessed that he has handled "his own actions," insubordination of active or retired military personnel, and "the eventual use of actors who were outside. "All these scenarios, as the president (Guaidó) said: we are analyzing things above and below the table, were done."
As for what Guaidó has said about the invasion attempt, his versions have been ambiguous. At first, he denied his participation in the so-called 'Operation Gideon' and later said that the government had infiltrated the plan to "massacre" its participants.