By Will Grant
BBC News, Venezuela
**Venezuela’s science and technology minister has resigned after his brother became embroiled in a corruption scandal involving several local banks.**Jesse Chacon’s brother Arne, who is the president of Banco Real, was arrested as part of an investigation into banking irregularities.
President Hugo Chavez said Mr Chacon’s resignation was for the best.
The government has intervened in seven banks recently, all of which are accused of the misuse of public funds.
It has announced plans to liquidate at least two of them.
Jesse Chacon is by far the highest profile casualty of a growing banking scandal involving people with alleged links to some of the top figures in President Hugo Chavez’s government.
Inner circle
The resignation of Mr Chacon comes a day after his brother was arrested as part of an investigation into irregularities at Banco Real.
“Jesse asked me if it would be best if he resigned,” Mr Chavez said on national television, “and I told him I thought it would.”
The minister’s resignation and his brother’s arrest are the latest episodes in a banking scandal in which seven banks were taken over by the government for alleged irregularities in their financial activities and the administration of state funds.
In total, eight bankers have been detained, including one billionaire businessman, Ricardo Fernandez, who supplied most of the maize flour for the government’s subsidised supermarkets.
For the opposition in Venezuela, the scandal is evidence of something they have claimed for years - that there is a inner circle of super-rich businessmen who have amassed their fortunes through close links to the socialist government.
But for Mr Chavez, it involves only a small group of rogue bankers who are now being purged from his government and dealt with by the justice system.
With important elections due to be held in Venezuela in September next year, Mr Chavez will hope that the resignation of one of his closest aides, a man who he routinely referred to as a comrade and a brother, will prove to the electorate that he is prepared to act on the scandal no matter who is involved.