Armando.info first appeared in 2010 as an emerging investigative journalism project. Its formal launch took place in July 2014. Since then, it has published weekly investigative reports containing accurate, well-documented information. By October 2017, the Armando.info community had produced and disseminated over 300 reports. The platform is considered by the media to be a benchmark for investigative journalism in Venezuela, covering issues such as money laundering, human rights and environmental problems. The Armando.info journalism team, led by co-founder José María Poliszuk, has received multiple awards for its work. These include a special mention in the Maria Moors Cabot Prize 'for its extraordinary impact in the region' and the Knight International Journalism Award in 2018, which recognises journalists whose resilient work has had a positive impact on societies in complex situations. The Knight International Journalism Award was given to Poliszuk for being one of two 'courageous pioneers of digital information'. In 2017, Poliszuk published on Armando.info links between a businessman associated with Nicolás Maduro and a government programme intended to combat hunger and shortages. This investigation resulted in a defamation lawsuit and forced Poliszuk and other journalists into exile. Co-founder Joseph Poliszuk is a member of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), for which he coordinated the Venezuelan team on the Panama Papers project. In 2019, he was awarded the John S. Knight Journalism Fellowship from Stanford University, and in 2020 he joined the Pulitzer Centre's Rainforest Investigation Network. Spanish national newspaper
El País said that the world would know little of the recent turmoil in Venezuela if not for the "in-depth reports" published by Armando.Info. It reports on all matters that contribute to the crisis in Venezuela, including corruption in other countries. One report on Mexican exploitation by overpricing
CLAP boxes sold to the Venezuelan government even as it was filling them with expired food products won the website the
ICFJ Knight Prize. As of 2019, according to the
Global Investigative Journalism Network, the group was mainly funded by grants from the
Open Society Foundations and the
National Endowment for Democracy. There are also several prominent female journalists in the field, including Isayen Herrera, Mari Carmen Vieira and Carol Padilla. Herrera works for the
New York Times and was a finalist for the Livingston Prize for her investigation into the reproductive rights of Venezuelan women, which was published in the newspaper. In 2021, she won the Press and Society Institute Award for her report From Merchants to Scientists: The True Miracle of Carvativir, which was published on Armando.info. In 2023, Armando.info received the
Global Shining Light Award for an investigation about illegal mining operations in Venezuela. In 2025, Armando.info received the Excellence Award from the Gabo Awards, presented by the Gabo Foundation in Bogotá. This journalism award recognised the ‘rigorous exercise of the craft of journalism and its commitment to the truth in an era marked by misinformation’. Ewald Scharfenberg, co-founder of Armando.info, represented the digital research platform.
Alex Saab In April and September 2017 four investigative journalists published reports in Armando.info about inflated food prices within the
CLAP initiative, exposing Colombian businessman
Alex Saab's relationship with the Venezuelan government. The first report showed Saab's connections to Hong Kong based Grupo Grand (including the listing of his son as a beneficiary and the company sharing an address with another of Saab's enterprises; Saab rejected the allegations) and that it charged the Venezuelan government prices far above the market rate. The second report investigated
Luisa Ortega's allegations about the CLAP programme. A joint report between the Central University of Venezuela and Armando.info showed that
milk powder supplied by Saab's company was not nutritious, having high levels of
sodium, low levels of
calcium and only 1/41 the
protein of normal milk. Following the publication, Armando.info and the journalists were threatened and had their personal information shared on social media, and Saab brought a lawsuit alleging continued defamation of reputation and aggravated injury charges, which carry a prison sentence of up to six years, leading the reporters to flee Venezuela. In a document addressed to the journalist and signed by the general director of CONATEL, Vianey Miguel Rojas "forbids citizens Roberto Denis Machín, Joseph Poliszuk, Ewald Scharfenberg and Alfredo José Meza to publish and disseminate mentions that go against the honor and reputation of the citizen Alex Naím Saab" through digital media, specifically on the site
Armando.info, "until the end of the current process in the case being pursued against said citizens". The ban was denounced by the
Venezuelan National Press Workers' Union (SNTP). Since the reports, the Armando.Info site suffered massive cyber attacks, warning that the ban on mentioning Saab in successive investigation articles "increases the threat". Roberto Deniz rejected the sentence, recalling that after the publications the journalistic team had been threatened via Twitter and banned from leaving the country by the 11th Court in Caracas. The Venezuelan opposition alleged that they were targeted by what they described as a "campaign of bribery and intimidation" by
Nicolás Maduro's government in December 2019. Venezuelan lawmakers and the
US State Department said that opposition deputies, in parties led or allied with Guaidó, were being offered up to US$1 million to not vote for him.
Luis Parra and other opposition deputies were removed from their parties following allegations that they were being bribed by Maduro. National Assembly deputies Ismael León and
Luis Stefanelli directly accused Parra in December 2019 of attempting to bribe deputies to vote against Guaidó. Parra denied the allegations and said he was open to being investigated for corruption. On 3 January 2020, Nicmer Evans, a Caracas-based analyst, alleged that Maduro had managed to cause 14 deputies to not cast a vote for Guaidó through these tactics. Guaidó theoretically controlled 112 seats in the Assembly at the time, needing 84 votes to win. The network operates through a system where
PDVSA, the Venezuelan state-owned oil company, trades oil for food intended for the CLAP program (
Local Committees for Supply and Production), which distributes essential goods in Venezuela. Antonio González Morales and his partners have been mentioned in the press as leaders of this network. ==Censorship==