How the fortune was hidden.

Three papers, one method

The question this site has always ended on is where a fortune of that size went. It turns out three Caracas newspapers answered it inside a single fortnight in January 1966, and the family never had the pages translated.

La Verdad ran it first, on 12 January 1966, under a headline that is the whole answer in one line: Hitz Entregó sus Bienes en 1948 A Terceras Personas Para Evadir una Demanda de la Nación. Hitz handed his assets to third parties in 1948 to evade a claim by the nation. The same page reported that nine more people, beyond the five then in the litigation, were holding assets of the Swiss millionaire, and that Bs 800,000 had been drawn on his signature fourteen days after he died.

Últimas Noticias followed on 13 January with the fuller version, under a section heading that could serve as the title of this page: Dónde se inició y cómo se ocultó la fortuna de Othmar Hitz. Where the fortune began, and how it was hidden.

According to that report, the money started in house sales built on a differential rate the Banco Central de Venezuela had set for coffee and cacao purchases between 1942 and 1947. Últimas Noticias of 13 January 1966 reported that the bank later judged those operations fraudulent, that most of the other merchants paid the bank back, and that Hitz refused and was charged with estafa.

The case ran for ten years and then lapsed. Últimas Noticias reported that he was warned he could still be sued for damages, and that he responded by putting his property in other people's names. When the bank returned with a civil claim, the paper wrote, the embargo the judge ordered could never be executed, because by then nothing stood in his name.

Then the detail that decided the next sixty years. Últimas Noticias reported that months after moving his assets, Hitz fell ill, and that knowing he was dying he wrote a will specifying which people were holding which of his property, all of it left to his daughter Anna Maria.

That will was never found.

The same paper reported that on 31 July his former wife sued Leo Kiehl to hand over the will and the property she said he was concealing, and that the action and the appeal to the Corte Superior Tercera en lo Penal both failed, because it could never be proved that Kiehl held power of attorney or possessed the missing document.

The name it was hidden under

On 18 January 1966 El Nacional printed the part the other two had not: Hitz Tenía su Fortuna A Nombre de Lina Rosa Fuentes Para Evadir Pago a la Nación De 3 Millones de Bolívares.

The fortune, on Anna Spring's account to that paper, was held in Lina Rosa Fuentes's name, to avoid repaying three million bolívares the Banco Central said he had taken. El Nacional added that he had served a year in prison in 1947 over the matter.

Lina Rosa Fuentes was a daughter of General Cipriano Castro, the former president of Venezuela. In court in January 1966 she wanted nothing to do with any of it. “Que me devuelvan mis joyas y acciones, no quiero saber de herencia,” she told the tribunal. Give me back my jewels and my shares, I want nothing to do with an inheritance.

One million bolivares, three days before he died

On 21 January 1966 La República went further and printed the document. Under the headline Naranjo Osty Obtuvo un Millón Cuando Hitz Estaba Agonizando, the paper reproduced a bill of exchange for one million bolívares payable to the lawyer Rafael Naranjo Ostty, drawn on the company Inteca, issued while Hitz lay dying. The caption states it was signed three days before he died, by Lina Rosa Fuentes and Leo Victor Kiehl.

The same page reported that simulated sales of the Hitz assets had been made, and that counter-documents exist. Those counter-documents are among the papers this archive is still looking for.

What was sold, and to whom

The reporting names property, which is what makes it checkable. La República of 28 January 1966 reported that land lots in the El Marqués district of Caracas had been sold in ventas simuladas to avoid the treasury, and photographed the development. Another report has a hacienda in Los Teques that belonged to Hitz in the hands of a son of General Cipriano Castro. El Nacional of 15 January reported that a sister of the millionaire had sold more than two million bolívares of the estate, property he had originally bought from General Vicencio Pérez Soto. And on 18 January a lawyer asked the Mercantile Registrar to freeze the books in which the companies were recorded.

The document that closes the door

There is one more piece, and it is the reason this is not simply a matter of asking. In the same El Nacional interview of 18 January 1966, Anna Spring said that after being given a building in 1961, she was deceived into signing a document renouncing all further claim on the estate.

If that instrument exists and says what she said it says, it stands in front of everything else on this page.

What this is, and is not

None of the above is a finding of any court. It is what four Caracas newspapers reported in January 1966, while the investigation was live and the people named were alive to contradict them.

And the papers did not agree with each other. On 18 January Últimas Noticias ran a piece headed ¿Es Producto Imaginativo la Herencia de Hitz?, asking whether a man with his assets already embargoed could have accumulated fifty millions in five years, and asking pointedly why Mrs Hitz had never taken the case against Leo Victor Kiehl to cassation. Rafael Naranjo Ostty told La Esfera the estate had never reached five million bolívares, and that a legend had been made of it. La Verdad noted that it had not been possible to demonstrate the fortune existed at all.

Both readings are in the record. This page carries both.