A tall, beautiful woman with striking green eyes, a loud mouth and a very complex conflict of interests. This is the profile of the Miss Venezuela Organization prostitution and corruption scandal whistleblower
In previous entries (check parts I and II of this series) I gave the layout of what the Miss Venezuela corruption and prostitution scandal is. It's a complex corruption web that compromises the Miss Venezuela Organization Board, Cisneros Media Group and top level politicians and business executives linked to chavismo, the political corrupt elite that has Venezuela on a stranglehold.
Today I want to write about the integrity of the whistleblower, a woman by the name of Annarella Bono, a former beauty pageant that used the contest and her looks as a stepping stone into the heights of the Venezuelan elite power, only to find out that the world she lives in is much more corrupt than she thinks.
A glamorously corrupted timeline:
The whole Miss Venezuela Organization prostitution and corruption plot has always been an open secret.
Carolina Perpetuo circa 1986 Source
Miss Miranda 1986 Carolina Perpetuo told a Venezuelan news portal the story of how board members of the Miss Venezuela Organization instructed her to take a trip to Panama to participate in a runway show. When she arrived in Panama City she found no runway but the fancy apartment of Manuel Noriega's second in command.
According to Perpetuo, Colonel Roberto Díaz Herrera invited her to chit-chat with some drinks. When she politely refused the Colonel's advances, she went back to her hotel to spend the night and return to Caracas the next day.
But the following day she had her passport retained and she had no way to communicate with Caracas.
When she finally made it back to the capital, she was appeased by the very man who sent her there.
Patricia Velázquez circa 1989 Source
"Very soon, I understood that in order to pay for the expenses of the Miss Venezuela pageant I had to use my gifts in order to find myself a sponsor. Not everything in this world had to go that far, but, I mistakenly thought that that would be my only possibility. [...] I had to prostitute myself" - Patricia Velázquez.
Actress, runway model and former beauty queen Patricia Velázquez described in her 2014 biography "Straight Walk" that she had to resort to becoming a prostitute to pay for the expenses in her participation of the 1989 Miss Venezuela pageant.
"I did everything I could to make him [the sponsor] like me, and I made it. He got me an apartment in Caracas and he paid for everything I needed." - Patricia Velázquez
Vivian Sleiman Source
Author Vivian Sleiman, who tried several times to get into the pageant has commented on several occasions about the indecent proposals that take place within the Organization. She claims that in 2001 she was asked repeatedly by organizers to "make visits to a particular sponsor that showed interest in her". The organizers instructed her to pack a bathing suit and wear provocative attire for the business meeting.
When she arrived at the meeting, she was greeted by a man wearing nothing but boxer shorts. She refused.
This Harvey Weinstein-like M.O. is frequent in the pageant, (and older than his antics) and the reactions we've seen to it are the tropical-silicone distorted version of the #MeToo scandal.
The dark side of sponsoring a candidate has always been there. When economic things turned sour in Venezuela and the Miss Venezuela Organization couldn't provide for the expenses that each candidate required, an opportunity for ill-intentioned people presented, and without doubt, they took advantage of it and the practice became widespread. It encouraged pretty, young women to sell their bodies in exchange for a shot of fame and glory.
Meet Annarella Bono: The wrong kind of whistleblower
Annarella Bono, circa 1997 Source
Annarella María Bono Morales (b. 1976) is an actress, TV hostess, model and former 1997 Miss Anzoátegui. A tall, beautiful woman with striking green eyes, a loud mouth and a very complex conflict of interests.
This is the profile of the Miss Venezuela Organization whistleblower.
The glamour of glitter, flashes and runways can seduce the most hard hearted. Chavismo's lack of moral sense eroded the integrity of the pageant, and it sure eroded the common sense (if any) in beauty queens.
This woman shed light on the shenanigans within the pageant when she angrily started commenting the Instagram posts of Emmy award winning journalist and former Miss Angie Pérez.
This menial, utterly unimportant event started a chain reaction within Venezuelan showbiz, and with social networks being as they are, the whole thing just went viral.
Every once in a while, as the previous timeline shows, some former contestant sheds light on the issue, comments are made, PR campaigns are launched and the Organization and Osmel Sousa's reputation are always washed.
Source
An anonymously uploaded, -and now deleted instagram picture- of beauty queen Zoraya Villarreal, who worked as director of the Diego Salazar Heritage Foundation, lit the fuse for Annarella Bono to shed light on her personal opinion of who's who in this scandal. For she started to name beauty queens, runway coaches, and designers , that in her view had connections with the chavista regime.
What she neglected to mention on her own was the very fact that she is married to a top aide of Hugo Chávez, Mayor-General Antonio Morales, a man that occupied several high-level posts within the red administration such as intelligence officer coordinator, Banking Activity Superintendent, and Chief of Staff for the Presidency.
Hugo Chavez was Morales' first choice for best man at her wedding with Annarella Bono. Chavez declined.
Quite foolishly and angrily did Ms. Bono call upon several women for having benefited personally and professionally with chavismo. I say foolishly because Annarella Bono's career has worked directly with the chavismo regime: She was the PR image of the Venezuelan Elections Council, the Ministry of Tourism and a high-level hostess for international guests to the Copa América 2007 football tournament.
A conflict of interest, according to Wikipedia is "a situation in which a person or organization is involved in multiple interests, financial or otherwise, in situations where serving one the interests could involve working against one of the other interests."
I thoroughly believe that this definition applies to Annarella Bono.
Her hubby is a top level intelligence officer working for the Venezuelan Stasi. He handles all relations with the Attorney General and chavismo's number two, drug kingpin Diosdado Cabello, through his office at the Strategic Center for Security and Homeland Protection. This office keeps a close track on opposition leaders, conducts illegal wiretapping, and political extortion. The extortion and corruption ring Morales handles is linked to the man that took Chavez's place at his wedding: Lebanese businessman Majed Khalil Majzoub, a man of many shady deals.
Annarella Bono, when confronted with this incontrovertible evidence of lack of moral character has always responded with bravado and a loud mouth, partnering with Miss Venezuela Mundo 2014 Deborah Menicucci, wife of Supreme Court Chief Magistrate Maikel José Moreno, (who sponsored Menicucci during her participation) in mocking and dismissing the accusations of her chavista connections.
Chief Magistrate and Supreme Court President Maikel Moreno.
Both Bono and Menicucci assume the fact that they're connected to chavismo, but angrily reply that they're not the only ones.
Having these skeletons hiding in the closet, why would a bimbo-trophy-wife like Annarella Bono delve into shedding light on a prostitution ring within the Miss Venezuela Organization?
Marital infidelity, a loud mouth and an utter lack of social media management.
Again, this banality is the whole issue that made everybody talk about the elephant in the room.
So why did she come out to speak about this?
Let's clear the litter of the showbiz media and take a look at the reasons Annarella Bono had for becoming a whistleblower.
Angie Pérez, circa 1998Source
On may 2017, former Miss Barinas and journalist Angie Pérez published information that linked Annarella Bono and her brother, Aldo with the purchase of several properties in Panama City and South Beach. Pérez also mentioned former Miss Vargas 2011 Sara Coello.
Sara Coello, circa 2011 Source
Coello is best friends with Annarella Bono, and is married to the nephew of Manuel Quevedo, Venezuela's Oil Minister. Again we see a pattern here, all of the Miss Venezuela's involved have links to Venezuela's state oil company PDVSA and the Diego Salazar Heritage Foundation whose director was another Miss Venezuela, Zoraya Villarreal.
Zoraya Villarreal, circa 1995, Director of the Diego Salazar Heritage Foundation Source
Shortly after the arrest of Diego Salazar, a gossip-focused instagram account posted a picture of Zoraya Villarreal depicting her work with the Foundation, and this made Annarella Bono angry, who questioned the derision of Villarreal and mentioned Ányela Galante as a connected former Miss with chavista links.
Bono's scorn to Galante is related with the fact that her husband had an affair with Galante's older sister, who is an ardent chavista supporter and ran for a seat in the constituent assembly, which destroyed her marriage and put Annarella into severe distress. Her mood swings on social media are a constant joke subject and many people attribute her temper to this break-up.
Even gossip journo Rocío Higuera was the target of Bono's accusations calling her an "educated slut". To which Higuera responded that Bono's break up, and not the scandal, was the real reason why she was coming forward with these accusations and that she should check her antidepressants and lithium dosage .
A brilliant stroke, considering the fact that of all people, Annarella Bono has no morals to lecture other women on sharing her bed with powerful chavista man.
These series of instagram posts and comments created a chain reaction that blew the lid on the Miss Venezuela corruption scandal, and the information made it to the media.
After the social media scramble, Bono was taken off the screen. And although she denies it, the facts speak for themselves: Her instagram stories and live videos of her working at the tv station used to be uploaded daily, and she no longer is doing them.
Because of her loud mouth and her holier-than-thou attitude she became the whistleblower of a decadent corruption scheme, while also being a part of it.
This concludes part III. Part IV will be up soon and will analyze the background of several of Annarella's enemies.
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