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>>Jared Cohen: Next up is a remarkable individual named Alberto Vollmer who I had the privilege
of sitting next to at dinner last night. Let me tell you about this guy for a minute.
He is the chairman and CEO of Venezuela's oldest privately-owned company, which is very
much a rarity in today's Venezuelan society. Just to give you an idea how old this company
is, it was actually founded the same year George Washington was re-elected president
of the United States. Beyond being a prominent businessman in Venezuela, Alberto has done
something remarkable that goes against the trend of any landowner or business person
in that country, which is he has founded, along with his wife, an organization called
Project Alcatraz, which takes reformed criminals and works to reintegrate them into society,
something for which the notion of having to socialize a society to be comfortable with
taking criminals back after they've reformed is quite the undertaking.
Alberto is going to talk to you about his experiences, and I know you'll enjoy it as
much as I did last night. Thanks. Alberto Vollmer.
>>Alberto Vollmer: Thanks. It's going to be a tough one after Geoffrey. I should have
brought some of the rum and Coke and Black Eyed Peas. It would be easier.
To begin, I want you to picture the following situation. I want you to imagine the situation.
It's 7:00 at night. You're in the office in this hacienda on this property. And it's,
as Jared was just saying, an old property. And you're the CEO of this very well-known
company. And suddenly the phone rings. It's the head of security. His name is Jimmy Perez.
Right? And he says, "Listen, I'm here with these policemen up on a hill. They're about
to kill this guy, and they need a red light or green light."
Okay. Let me give you a bit of context before I continue with the story.
Oops, sorry about that. Pressed the wrong button. Okay. A bit of context.
Venezuela, as Jared was saying once again, keeping a business in Venezuela is extremely
difficult, either because the macroeconomic conditions are impossible because we've got
an oil-based economy. Also we've got Chavez, who is taking over most of the private companies.
I think you've read about that. But also, I think one of the main things,
one of the main challenges every Venezuelan has is the insecurity levels.
We've got the highest homicide rate -- one of the highest homicide rates in the world.
We've got the highest kidnapping rate in the world. This is just to compare Iraq with Venezuela.
I don't know if you saw Newsweek's article a week or two weeks ago comparing the homicide
rates between Iraq and Venezuela. Now, bringing it closer to the States, this
is more or less what the homicide rate looked like in the States Ciudad Juarez right after
the big drug war where they had many killings. Ciudad Juarez was around 133 in 2009.
Caracas -- these are figures from the Ministry of Interior, Caracas was 232 homicides per
100,000 inhabitants. That means that, compared to Caracas, Detroit is like a walk in the
park. Anyway, in that context, what had happened
was that these three gang members had actually attacked one of our security guards. They
had almost killed him. They took his gun. They were about to finish him off. And then
they decided -- I don't know why they decided not to kill him.
But, anyway, our position was, if we don't retaliate, this is going to be a terrible
message not only to this gang but to all the other gangs. They're going to come inside
our properties, and this is going to become hell.
So, if you call the police, the police isn't going to do anything about it. So I told Jimmy,
ex-policeman, "Go after these guys. And then we'll see what we do with them when we find
them." Well, he called me up when he had the first
one. And I said, "Nah, forget it. Just give them over to the police."
Well, the police, when they saw him, this is a really wanted guy. So they said, "No,
we've got to kill him. We've got to bump him off."
So they take him up to this hill. Jimmy goes behind them just because he thought, you know,
they were playing with psychological power here. But, when he realized it was going to
happen, he called me up. And, of course, I said no. I said no way red light. So that
got even more difficult. He had to negotiate. At the end he had to bribe the policemen,
which is illegal, right? Bribe the policemen so they wouldn't kill
the guy, which is also illegal. So they hand him over. I told Jimmy, "Bring
him to me." And we have this gentleman's conversation
without handcuffs. And at the end we reach an agreement.
I gave him two options. The first option was you work with no pay for three months to make
up for what you did, or we hand you over to the police. He accepted the first option.
He started working. Actually, I told him come on Monday. If you don't appear and if you
don't abide by these rules, you know what we'll do. We know how to find you, and we'll
hand you over to the police. So, anyway, he starts working.
A few days later we find the second guy. And the second guy happened to be the gang leader.
Well, he also accepts the first option. He starts working. And, after a few days,
he has to have a meeting with me. So we have this meeting.
And he says, "Listen, I'm thinking this could actually turn into an opportunity. Do you
think we could give this opportunity or you could give this opportunity to another two
or three of my friends?" And I said, "Well, tell them to come on Friday."
We set up a rendezvous. And, actually, what happened was it wasn't two or three that appeared
but the whole gang. It was 22 guys, right? And it's a little intimidating.
But the -- you know, you have to go with the flow. You sort of go forward. You don't look
back, especially not right now. And so anyway, there we decided, yeah, let's go ahead, you
know. These guys, I was thinking of what the professor was saying yesterday. Why not? I
mean, these guys are giving us the most valuable asset that they actually have, which is their
identity. Later, we would also find out they have the information of the whole criminal
network, which is incredibly valuable. So we take them on board. They start working.
And, after about two months of working, actually, what we do is we use psychological treatment.
We use rugby. Rugby because it's a contact sport; it's a team sport.
The other thing we use is, of course, values formation and formal education. And a lot
of hard work. So, anyway, these guys after two months, they
-- one of them stands up in a meeting and says, "Listen, this is fine. But this isn't
going to work." "Why isn't it going to work?"
"Well, in a month's time we're out of the program. And we're going to have to go back
to killing if we don't want to get killed, killing the cemetery gang, which is the opposing
gang." "Well, you know, you bring me the problem.
Give me a solution." They said, "Well, the only solution with those
guys is to kill them all. They're all psychopaths, man."
So they go through the descriptions of these guys -- they *** their mother, this, that,
the whole story. And it really -- it was a real setback. But, after a few days, we sort
of rebuilt our sort of determination. I told Jimmy, "You know, Jimmy, let's go up
to this place and see if" -- we're in this -- right in the middle of this gang war.
And it's one of those double or nothing situations. I think we don't really have an option.
So, finally, we decide to go up. And just imagine. This is -- it really sounds quite
stupid. Oh, by the way, I forgot to show the -- this is some of the gang members. But
that was what happened when we -- this was more or less the faces we had in that first
meeting with the 22 gang members with the first gang.
So anyway, we decided to go up. What I was saying before is try to imagine, you know,
you're in the country with the highest kidnapping rate. And you're going to go up to the slum
where the police don't enter because in the last year they've killed two or three policemen.
They've got sniper positions. It's a dangerous place.
So, anyway, we -- it sounds like a very stupid thing to do. But I think we were in one of
those situations where we didn't really have an option.
So, we start driving up through this slum, windy road. As you get further and further
up the hill, you start feeling the heavy looks at you, aggressive looks. And they get even
more aggressive. The road gets narrower. Until finally we got to the dead end, which is where
the cemetery gang meets. That's where they hang out, and I remember just an instance
before stopping the car, I said, you know what, Jimmy. We got to move quick. Get out
of the car. When you get out of the car, let's create momentum. We have to change the game.
I, by the way, had told him we are going up there in our best suit and tie, right, to
sort of create the change of game. So, anyway, we get out of the car and it is
sort of like jumping out and giving orders to these guys that have the guns here, no
shirts. They're sort of beginning to revolve around the car. I said, Hey, give me a table.
Plug this in. Hang this screen up and so on and so forth. We were getting out with video
beams and computers and stuff. Anyway, we started a presentation. And in
the first three or four minutes we had about --
[ Laughter ] Yeah, I know, I put them to sleep. But anyway...
Actually, what was going on while we were doing this, everybody started curiously sort
of peeking out, what the hell is going on here, right? This guy in a suit and tie. These
two guys in suits and ties. Anyway, we had about 200 people standing around us.
Oh, man, sorry about that. We had about two or three guys standing around
us -- 200 people standing around us. And, basically, what we did was we talked about
the future of the county. And at the end, I decided to challenge the cemetery gang
-- most of them were standing around us -- and seeing if they were courageous enough
to enter Project Alcatraz. As soon as I said that, they started sticking
out their guns and saying, Those sons of ***, man, they killed my brother. They killed
-- whatever. I said, Okay. So you can continue killing each other.
So, after this discussion, I said take me to the gang leader's house. The gang leader
had been shot up by the first gang and he was paralyzed in bed, three shots in the back.
So we go to his house. And I explained to him, listen, we've got this option. It is
your decision, man. You take it. It is your gang. Finally, he said, Okay, let's do it.
So the second gang enters. We start working with them separately until, finally, one day
after about two months we decided to put them in one room and make them make peace.
Now, what happened there was that the word spread in the rest of the region and we started
getting calls from all the gangs, prisons, so on, wanting to enter the project. Ever
since we have been recruiting those gangs and, of course, the -- sorry, I forgot to
flick these. The homicide rates have gone down dramatically
in our region. And, basically, we have learned three very important things. The first thing
is always believe in people no matter what their background is. Second, criminals are
incredibly valuable for solving the criminal issue. And the third is -- at least what we
have found, is in the future, in these few next years, businesses must get more involved
in social transformation. That's the story of Project Alcatraz. Thank you very much.
[ Applause ]