After staging a failed coup and going to prison, the Venezuelan army officer Hugo Chavez ran to be president in 1998, campaigning against corruption and offering revolutionary change. His nation was seen as a prosperous beacon of stability, built on its great oil wealth, envied by many people elsewhere in the region. He won by promising to tackle the inequality that scarred it so badly and take on the oligarchs enriching themselves through favours and nepotism. Western celebrities, journalists and politicians, from Sean Penn through to Jeremy Corbyn, started flocking to South America to hail their new progressive hero supposedly fighting for social justice.
As Venezuela slid to ruin, Russian oil firms stepped in, Chinese funders supplied cash and even Iran assisted
One year after that election victory his police chief – who had planned that failed coup with him – came to warn his old friend that corruption was starting to corrode their new regime.
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