No single figure for the Hitz estate exists in the public record. Five do, in three currencies, printed by papers on three continents between November 1965 and February 1966. The Washington Post put it at ten million dollars on its front page of 23 November 1965. Swiss and European papers that same month printed figures from forty million to one hundred and fifty million francs. The Caracas press, counting in January and February 1966, printed thirty to fifty million bolívares, and Últimas Noticias gave it a headline: fifty million. One of the lawyers in the Caracas proceedings told La Esfera that the estate never reached five million bolívares.
Why they disagree
Four reasons, and none of them is a typo. First, the papers were counting in different currencies in different years, and 1965 exchange rates are not today's. Second, they were counting different things: a bank account reported frozen in 1963, a coffee and real estate business built in Venezuela, bearer shares, jewels and securities taken from safe-deposit boxes in January 1966, and property. A reporter who had one of those in front of him printed that one. Third, most of the numbers came from interested parties: a mother fighting for her daughter's inheritance, a lawyer defending the estate's administration, a widow. Fourth, the Venezuelan reports of 1966 were themselves part of a scandal, and the family treats them as evidence of what was being said, not as evidence of what was true.
Why the family does not pick a number
It would be easy to take the largest figure, convert it at today's rates and put it in a headline. The family does not, for the same reason it does not convert any of the figures: a converted number would be the family's claim, and the family makes no claim on this site. What it publishes is each figure with its paper and its date, so that anyone can see what was printed and by whom. A litigator does the useful thing with the spread: treats each number as a statement about one asset at one date, and asks which of those assets can be traced. That is the conversation the page for counsel is built for.