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Three years after the death of Hugo Chávez and the presidential election of Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela was in economic freefall and consumed by hunger. In 2016, President Maduro’s government responded with the CLAP program: a domestic aid initiative that was billed as providing high-quality, essential food items to Venezuelans impacted by the nation’s economic crisis — some of whom were at risk of
starvation.
This FRONTLINE documentary A Dangerous Assignment: Uncovering Corruption in Maduro’s Venezuela shows that, in fact, the CLAP program was not all that the government claimed it to be. Made in collaboration with the independent Venezuelan news site Armando.info, the documentary features groundbreaking reporting from investigative journalist Roberto Deniz and his colleagues. They revealed that the government was purchasing low-quality products for the CLAP program. The Armando.info journalists’ reporting ended up helping expose a vast corruption scandal that had benefited Maduro and other officials, spanning from Venezuela to Europe to the U.S. — and it ultimately made the journalists targets of the Maduro government.
A Dangerous Assignment: Uncovering Corruption in Maduro’s Venezuela was a finalist for the News & Documentary Emmy Award.
