Reuters Investigates

Venezuela’s embarrassment of riches — oil

Today’s special report, “Pension fund scandal shakes up Venezuelan oil giant,” examines state oil company PDVSA and the problems it has exploiting what are said by OPEC to be the world’s largest known reserves of crude oil.

At the heart of the latest scandal is a Connecticut hedge fund manager named Francisco Illarramendi who has pleaded guilty to multiple counts of wire fraud, securities and investment advisor fraud. Prosecutors say he ran a Ponzi scheme that lost up to half a billion dollars, most of it money that had been entrusted to Illarramendi by PDVSA’s pension fund.

Check out this interactive graphic which shows how Venezuela has taken the top spot in terms of world oil reserves.

This one shows how despite rising estimates of the country’s reserves, PDVSA’s production has actually declined in the decade since Chavez came to power.

Winning the popular vote in Venezuela

The results of Venezuela’s parliamentary election are in and, as we said in last week’s special report, it’s not enough to win the popular vote. The opposition to President Hugo Chavez say they have won 52 percent of the vote, but that gives them only a third of the seats in parliament. Read our latest story here.

Still, it was a major blow to Chavez and raises opposition hopes of defeating him at the next presidential election in 2012.

To see the special report on the opposition in PDF format, click here.

Dive in, the water’s fine

Special reports are the best of the best from Reuters, and this is the place to find them. We’ll be featuring investigative stories, in-depth profiles and long-form narrative stories here.

Reuters has a global Enteprise Reporting team with editors in New York, London and Singapore, drawing on the work of some 2,900 journalists in 200 bureaus around the world.

To kick it off, take a look at this story from Frank Jack Daniel in Caracas. Venezuelans will elect a new parliament on Sunday and the opposition is hoping to make a dent in President Hugo Chavez’s power.

Chavez has dominated politics for more than a decade — as one opposition figure put it: “In Venezuela, you have to win elections like David beat Goliath.” FULL STORY

We’ll have more on Latin America tomorrow with a profile of Dilma Rousseff, the frontrunner in Brazil’s presidential elections.