Maduro prepares to send 20 tons of Venezuela’s gold to Russia
The Venezuelan government under Maduro is preparing to transfer 20 tons of gold – roughly 20% of the Central Bank’s reserves – to Russia, said José Guerra, a member of the country’s National Assembly and a retired economist for the Central Bank.
Guerra claims to have received the information from a Central Bank official with whom he still has contact. An aircraft from Moscow has supposedly arrived to collect the gold.
“We demand that the Central Bank give us information about what is going on,” Guerra said, emphasizing that this gold does not belong to Central Bank president Calixto Ortega, but to the Venezuelan people.
The 20 tons of goal have already been taken from the Central Bank’s reserves and are ready to be dispatched, Bloomberg reported, citing an informed source.
The plane from Moscow has already landed in Caracas: a mysterious civilian flight was documented on January 28, writes Russian news outlet Novaya Gazeta, citing information from FlightRadar.
A Boeing 777 belonging to Nordwind Airlines, which typically undertakes charter flights for tourists, took off from the Vnukovo International Airport in Moscow at 14:00 Moscow time on Monday.
The plane left for a new flight shortly after returning from Thailand, having refilled and taken on two new crews.
Russian tourists have been officially advised not to travel to Venezuela. For a long time already, no group tours to the Latin American country have been sold.
Nordwind did not respond to a request for comment.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov denied the allegations. “At present, one must treat the various false reports very carefully,” he told TASS.
“Russia is prepared to facilitate a resolution to the internal political situation in Venezuela without interfering in this country’s internal affairs,” Peskov stressed. “And Russia is categorically opposed to any third country interfering in Venezuela’s internal affairs.”
Nicolás Maduro himself has recently left his residence and is now staying at a military base, reported RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan, who was able to interview Maduro.
“President Vladimir Putin has always given us assistance from Russia in every way, and we receive it with gratitude,” Maduro said, adding that he intends to “strengthen the collaboration in the economy, trade, oil, gas and military” between the two countries. Maduro claims that some of the “most modern military equipment in the world” will soon be shipped to Venezuela.
On Monday, the US imposed sanctions on PDVSA, the Venezuelan state-owned oil company, de facto cutting it off from the opportunity to sell oil on the American market and to import from the US petrol and other oil products needed to dilute the resource when shipping it to China, India and other countries.
The following day, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that control of the Venezuelan government’s accounts in the American banks had been transferred to Juan Guaidó, the head of Venezuela’s National Assembly who declared himself interim president last week.