CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) -- What happened to $2 billion Venezuela's
                 government was supposed to deposit in a rainy day fund but didn't?

                 The puzzle is brewing into a scandal as President Hugo Chavez tries to reassert his
                 authority following a brief coup and a feisty opposition searches for a way to oust
                 him.

                 The government has admitted that between 2000 and 2001, it failed to make several
                 congressionally approved deposits to the Macro Economic Stabilization Fund,
                 which is supposed to collect half of Venezuela's oil revenue above budgeted levels
                 to protect the economy during slumps in oil prices.

                 Instead, the government has explained, the money went to budgeted expenses like
                 salaries and pensions. Government officials testifying before congress last week
                 argued they only "delayed" fund payments because they were facing a severe cash
                 shortage stemming from a late 2001 slide in oil prices.

                 "I don't say that we took money from the stabilization fund. Rather, I say that we
                 used money from that indivisible mass called the treasury, and the (fund) payments
                 were delayed," said Science and Technology Minister Nelson Merentes. Merentes
                 was finance minister when the deposits were to supposed to have been made.

                 Opposition legislators insist the "delay" amounts to corruption -- even if no officials
                 pocketed the funds -- and have tacked the controversy onto their list of reasons to
                 push Chavez out of office before his term ends in 2007.

                 Fifteen lawmakers have asked the attorney general to seek Chavez's impeachment
                 on charges of misappropriation of public funds. They also filed corruption
                 complaints against four former finance ministers and several Central Bank and
                 treasury officials.

                 "This is undoubtedly the most scandalous case of misappropriation in our history,"
                 said congressman Andres Velasquez of the opposition Radical Cause party. He
                 called a $17 million misappropriation scandal that ousted President Carlos Andres
                 Perez in 1993 an "insignificant detail" compared to the Chavez administration case.

                 Perez is the only Venezuelan president to be impeached for corruption since the
                 South American country became a democracy in 1958.

                 Chavez's defenders insist that redirecting public funds for other budgeted expenses
                 only amounts to an "administrative irregularity," not corruption.

                 Even so, "it's a blow to the credibility of the government," said Janet Kelly,
                 professor of public policy at the Caracas Graduate Institute for Advanced
                 Management. "The government looks bad in its economic management. Whether
                 they take anyone down will be political more than anything, because everyone
                 agrees what happened was not good."

                 Chavez kept a step ahead of his pursuers by replacing the economic team
                 responsible for the missing fund deposits, Kelly said. Newly appointed Planning
                 Minister Felipe Perez had long been a proponent of reforming the law regulating the
                 fund, arguing it was too inflexible.

                 "We told (Chavez) that he needed to have a good (fund) and that the one he had
                 was badly designed," Perez said. "The president defended it because he didn't know
                 about these things and he trusted his people. Unfortunately, we are suffering the
                 consequences."

                  Copyright 2002 The Associated Press.