Venezuela “is a state that is not just an ally of organized crime but one that has been taken over by organized crime”

Ewald Scharfenberg is the founder of the Venezuelan investigative website Armando.Info. For more than a decade, the site has provided readers with a unique window into the workings of Venezuela's authoritarian regime and the toll its activities and abuses have taken on the country's population. Scharfenberg, editor Roberto Deniz, and two other Armando Info journalists fled Venezuela after the government persecuted them for their reporting on corruption in a state food distribution program. I spoke with him about Venezuela’s struggle to regain its democracy, the criminal nature of the Maduro regime, the shadowy figure of Alex Saab and the difficult reality of trying to practice journalism in today’s Venezuela. [En español]