Jumping the Visa queue by telling Valle Arriba how they juke the oil export stats

Ah, Wikileaks, the gift that keeps on giving… Staff at the U.S. Embassy in Caracas were told to watch for potentially useful Venezuelan officials standing in line at...

Ah, Wikileaks, the gift that keeps on giving…

Staff at the U.S. Embassy in Caracas were told to watch for potentially useful Venezuelan officials standing in line at the visa counter and let them skip the line, El Pais said.

The tactic appears to have been successful — officials also revealed that PDVSA sold oil to China for as little as $5 a barrel, suffered from growing problems of quality control and used refined products to raise the price of Venezuela crude, it said.

Somehow, I just don’t think this is the sort of thing Evita Golinger fantasized about when she heard a massive trove of U.S. diplomatic cables were about to be leaked…