Morón is not a common surname like García, Rodríguez, or González. In Spain, where it originated, only 8,532 people bear the name among 47.33 million inhabitants. Venezuela is the second country with the most people named Morón – 6,993 – followed by Peru with 5,852. The most famous Morón in Venezuela is historian Guillermo Morón, whose ancestry remains unknown. The other perhaps more notable Morón is the coastal town in Carabobo, where the El Palito refinery operates.
The combination of Morón-Hernández as first and second surnames is also rare. In Spain, 8 out of every 1,000 people have Hernández as their first surname. In total, the INE records 351,591 people with the name Hernández. In Venezuela, it ranks as the fourth most common surname, with 534,500 holders. Cupid may have aimed his arrow from a Morón to one of the many Hernández, as noted by El Nacional.
Although genealogical data indicate only 65 instances of the Morón Hernández combination, social media exhibits the name Santiago José Morón Hernández across three distinct individuals: one is a chef and culinary advisor, another claims to be a jeweler and goldsmith, and the third describes himself as a potter and ceramist. Additionally, there’s a fourth individual named Ricardo José, who markets himself as a psychologist graduated from UCV and “specialized in mental health.” All four are Venezuelan, but none of them are Santiago José Morón Hernández or his brother Ricardo José, known to be gold, coltan, and diamond traders, and alleged frontmen for Nicolás Ernesto Maduro Guerra, who were sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department on July 23, 2020.
From that day forward, no national or international news outlet reported on the Morón brothers without referring to them as the frontmen of Nicolás Ernesto Maduro Guerra, the son of Nicolás Alejandro Maduro Moros, the man who leads Venezuela and is unrecognized by more than 60 countries. In 2020, journalists, analysts, and politicians scoured the internet and all available search engines for information on their professional and political activities, familial and friendship connections, or any other clues about the Morón Hernández brothers, but found nothing. Nothing. Despite significant efforts from a variety of web search experts, there was no indication of any past or present involving the brothers. They were virtually nonexistent, showing only the sanctions and news that repeated without much variation.
The media could only reproduce information from the U.S. Treasury Department and the most sensationalist speculations. That was it. However, the website Asimplevista.com published an editorial celebrating that, while Venezuelans had to lament the existence of “a Santiago José Morón Hernández accused by the United States of being a frontman for the presidential heir in gold and coltan dealings, they should celebrate.” With the same rigor used in combating fake news, the editorialist argues why there should be a celebration: “For every Santiago José Morón Hernández who makes headlines with the only ‘merit’ of cozying up to power to exploit us, there are countless others working hard, creating, and fostering decency, like the chef from Carora, a graduate of the legendary Le Cordon Bleu, and the potter from Trujillo, who has spent 40 years teaching his craft to children and teenagers.”
It raises suspicions that Asimplevista.com provides details on the background and journey of the alleged chef and potter that cannot be found on social media or their respective web pages.
The “celebratory” note was part of a strategy to erase all traces of the Morón Hernández brothers from cyberspace. Almost everything has vanished, not due to public disinterest but due to the actions of experts cleaning up undesirable pasts and reconstructing glamorous public profiles. “The Morón brothers are like ghosts,” says people who knew them in Zulia.
Asimplevista.com published the editorial on July 23, 2020, amidst the sanction scandal. The Morón Hernández brothers anticipated the crackdown and preemptively erased all their online records, deploying the chef, the potter, the jeweler, and the “mental health psychologist” as straw men. Even though the OFAC sanction still appears on thousands of web pages in all languages, the actual information about Ricardo and Santiago, along with their family and friends, has been “de-indexed” and is not recorded by common search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, Safari, and others. In the deep web, things are different and more obscure.
Their social media profiles have been adjusted to the strictest privacy settings, and photographs, comments, social media posts, and news about them, their family, and friends have disappeared. They have become cyber-cosmic dust, missing electrons. In the few remaining Instagram posts mentioning Zuzana Melicherová, Ricardo José’s partner, responses and references from friends can be found, but not the statements made by Zuzana that triggered them. There’s also no news about their participation in tennis tournaments or publications about their very active life filled with luxuries, parties, and eccentricities.
While the brothers Ricardo and Santiago had been quite discreet, their family maintained constant updates and were depicted by their numerous friends. Everything was visible on social media until it suspiciously disappeared.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control of the Treasury Department sanctioned Santiago José and Ricardo José Morón Hernández under executive order 13,692 (amended), “because both supervise the financial mechanism of the illicit gold scheme run by Nicolás Ernesto Maduro Guerra.” He is labeled the “zar of gold and coltan” and is accused of conducting illegal transactions, including the sale of gold extracted in Venezuela and dispatched from the Central Bank of Venezuela.
The Treasury Department argues that the Morón Hernández brothers “were hired by Nicolás Ernesto Maduro Guerra to conduct business in his name and to oversee the financial mechanism of the illicit gold scheme.”
It adds that “both employ a variety of companies to carry out transactions and the marketing of valuable metals.”
Santiago is identified as Maduro Guerra’s principal assistant: “He accompanies him in his activities and supports him in financial, technological, and logistical management. Meanwhile, Ricardo is presented as the one responsible for high finance operations and the transfer of goods.”
Given the severity of their activities in favor of the corruption of high-ranking officials in the regime, the Treasury Department blocked all properties and interests of these individuals in the United States, or in possession or control by Americans. OFAC regulations prohibit American individuals from engaging in transactions involving any property or interests of sanctioned individuals, whether within or in transit to the United States. The sanctions impact the real estate and business ventures the Morón Hernández family (parents and siblings) were developing in Florida, Texas, and California. And worst of all, they have jumped from near total anonymity to the worst kind of notoriety.
According to the sanctions, Santiago José and Ricardo José Morón Hernández are involved in the illegal financial management of the regime and are commercializing gold and coltan from Guayana through mixed companies linked to Nicolás Maduro, his son Nicolás Ernesto Maduro Guerra, Cilia Flores, and the children from his first marriage.
The close friendship between the Morón Hernández brothers and Nicolás Maduro’s son became public in Zulia. In 2017, María José Morón celebrated her son’s first communion, and Santiago José invited Nicolás Maduro Guerra. A party took place at the Las Palmas room of Lago Maracaibo Club, formerly known as the Creole Club, in utmost intimacy and discretion. Guests were advised not to take photos.
One guest – the mother of a schoolmate of the communing child, Rita Cecilia Morales, daughter of David Morales, a main partner at the Falcón Clinic in Maracaibo and a respected person in Zulia – recognized Maduro Guerra and took a photo without thinking. Within moments, she was surrounded by a team of bodyguards. They tried to pressure her into deleting the image, but Morales resisted. Voices were raised, tensions escalated, and the commotion hastened the end of the party. Guests began to leave, including Rita Morales and her husband Edward Méndez, a businessman and contractor in the oil sector.
The next day, motorcycles and vehicles circled the Méndez Morales residence early in the morning. In the afternoon, Sebin officials knocked on their door and demanded once more that Rita delete the photo of Maduro Guerra. Rita refused and threw her phone against a wall. The photo of Maduro Guerra went viral on social media more due to the guards’ ferocity than its content. The president’s son wasn’t seen dancing in a shower of dollars, as had previously happened, but absorbed in his mobile phone. Faced with the situation, the Méndez Morales decided to flee to Aruba until tensions cooled down.
On the third day, as Rita Morales and her husband boarded a private plane at La Chinita airport, they were detained and taken to Caracas, to El Helicoide, the Sebin headquarters. Rita was imprisoned for over a week. The family opted for discretion, and the Morón Hernández brothers intervened so that “the bad moment” wouldn’t last too long. “They understood it was very tempting to take that photo and share it,” said someone close to the family. Once released, Rita, her husband, and their daughter emigrated.
In the photo, neither of the Morón Hernández brothers appeared, nor did the party’s hostess. Only Maduro Guerra was at a table, sitting alone, but it shed light on his connection with Constructora Cresmo and its government contracts. To date, the only public image of Nicolás Ernesto with Santiago José remains one taken in Miraflores, showing Maduro Guerra smiling with Santiago Morón in the background looking like a bodyguard.
The second and final time this relationship became public, official, and much more evident was when on July 23, 2020, just days after the Treasury Department sanctioned the Morón Hernández brothers, Maduro Guerra defended them on his Twitter account: “Only those with authority can impose sanctions; it’s necessary for a proven crime to exist. The United States has no proof of illegal gold sales by the Morón brothers. All they have are media at their service that forsake rigor and ethics to spread lies.”
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