“El Venezolano” Arrested in Puerto Cancún for Extortion

Cancun — In an operation conducted by agents of the State Attorney General's Office, Jorge Luis Brizuela Guevara was arrested in the vicinity of the upscale Puerto Cancún area. The suspect, known as "El Venezolano," was apprehended on the basis of an outstanding arrest warrant issued by a criminal judge for the crimes of extortion and attempted homicide.

The arrest was carried out at his residence in Shark Tower as part of the legal proceedings against him. At the time of his detention, Brizuela Guevara attempted to negotiate with police officers to avoid being transferred, requesting assistance to leave the country for Venezuela or Canada. This attempted escape was recorded in the official report of the events that occurred on Tuesday night.

Brizuela Guevara has previously been implicated in various investigations for alleged links to money laundering and illicit financing networks. He has also been connected to controversies surrounding multi-million dollar contracts awarded to his company, Pronalab, during the previous state administration.

Despite the significance of the capture, the detainee has not been officially presented to the media, and his status is not yet reflected in the National Registry of Detentions. The specific processes that led to the arrest warrant remain unknown, as the State Attorney General's Office has not commented on the arrest.

The suspect's background includes being part of the "Boricua Papers" investigation in 2023, where he was categorized as "Nicolás Maduro's intelligence agent and a link to the Romanian mafia in the state of Quintana Roo." The documents from that case were leaked through a hack of the Ministry of National Defense (Sedena) and gave rise to the "Guacamaya Leaks." Those leaks revealed that Brizuela, a friend and operator of the former governor of Quintana Roo and current Mexican ambassador to Canada, Carlos Joaquín González, benefited from multimillion-dollar contracts.

Jorge Brizuela has faced fraud accusations from several businessmen and survived an assassination attempt. He was also involved in a shooting while inside his vehicle, which authorities described as a "settling of scores."

Nicknamed "The Venezuelan," Jorge Brizuela Guevara owns Pronalab in Santo Domingo, a laboratory involved in the Koldo plot—a corruption case in Spain related to the purchase of masks and tourist interests in the Caribbean.

Intelligence files from the CIA and the Mexican Ministry of National Defense describe him as an agent of the Bolivarian Intelligence Service and a businessman with ties to the Romanian mafia in Quintana Roo. His connection to the Koldo case in Spain is established through Víctor de Aldama, an intermediary whom the Venezuelan government intelligence agent met on several occasions in Mexico, Madrid, and Zamora, according to reports in El Español.

Brizuela Guevara was also the subject of a 2022 investigation related to the murder of Argentine businessman Federico Mazzoni, who was executed by professional hitmen in Riviera Maya.