The Morón brothers rose to fame in 2017 when their ties to the heir of the Venezuelan dictator were uncovered.
Redacción | EL NACIONAL
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 surnamed Morón –6,993– followed by Peru with 5,852. The most famous Morón in Venezuela is the historian Guillermo Morón, of whom no descendants are known. The other Morón, perhaps even more famous, is the town on the Carabobo coast where the El Palito refinery operates.
The combination of Morón and Hernández, as first and second surnames, is also uncommon. In Spain, 8 out of every 1,000 people have Hernández as their first surname. In total, the INE has 351,591 Hernández registered. In Venezuela, it’s the fourth most common surname with 534,500 people. Cupid may have marked a Morón to one of the many Hernández.
Though genealogical records only document the Morón Hernández combination 65 times, the name Santiago José Morón Hernández repeats across three distinct individuals on social media: one is a chef and culinary advisor, the second presents himself as a jeweler and goldsmith, and the third identifies as a potter and ceramist. Additionally, there’s a fourth individual named Ricardo José, but he advertises as a psychologist graduated from UCV and “specialized in mental health.” All four are Venezuelans, but none are Santiago José Morón Hernández or his brother Ricardo José, who are involved in the sale of gold, coltan, diamonds, and are alleged fronts for Nicolás Ernesto Maduro Guerra, sanctioned on July 23, 2020, by the U.S. Department of the Treasury.
Leap to unwanted notoriety
From that day forward, there was not a national or international media outlet that did not refer to the Morón brothers as the fronts for Nicolás Ernesto Maduro Guerra, the son of Nicolás Alejandro Maduro Moros, the individual who holds the presidency of Venezuela and whom more than 60 countries do not recognize as such. In 2020, journalists, analysts, and politicians scoured the internet with every search engine at their disposal looking for information about their professional and political activities, family and friendship connections, and any other clues about the Morón Hernández brothers, but found nothing. Nothing. Although there were some significant efforts from various web search experts. There was no indication of anything regarding the brothers’ past or present. They were virtually nonexistent. Only the sanction and the news repeated without much variation appeared.
The media could only reproduce information from the Treasury Department and the speculations of the most sensationalist outlets. That was all. However, Asimplevista.com editorialized celebrating that although Venezuelans had to mourn the existence of “a Santiago José Morón Hernández whom the U.S. accuses of being a front for the presidential heir in the gold and coltan deals, they should celebrate.” With the same rigor it uses in the fight against fake news, the editorialist argues why there is a reason to celebrate: “For every Santiago José Morón Hernández that occupies headlines with the sole ‘merit’ of being near power to plunder us, there are countless others working, creating and promoting decency, like the chef born in Carora, graduated from the legendary Le Cordon Blue, and the potter from Trujillo who has been teaching his craft to children and adolescents for 40 years.”
It raises suspicions that Asimplevista.com provides details about the background and journey of the supposed chef and potter that cannot be found on social networks or on the websites of the chef or the potter.
The “celebratory” note was part of a strategy to erase the traces of the Morón Hernández brothers in cyberspace. Almost everything has vanished, and not due to a lack of public interest but rather because of the actions of experts in cleaning up undesirable pasts and reconstructing glamorous public profiles. “The Morón brothers are like ghosts,” says people who knew them in Zulia.
Barriers in limbo
Asimplevista.com published the editorial on July 23, 2020, amid the sanctions scandal. The Morón Hernández awaited the storm and preemptively erased all their records on the Internet, placing the chef, the potter, the goldsmith, and the “mental health psychologist” as straw men. Although the OFAC sanction continues to appear on thousands of websites in all languages, real information about Ricardo and Santiago, as well as their family and friends, has been “de-indexed” and is not registered by commonly used search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, Safari, and others. In the deep web, things are different and darker.
Their social media profiles were adjusted to the strictest privacy settings and the photographs, comments, social posts, and news that existed about them, their family and friends have disappeared. They are cyber cosmic dust, vanished electrons. In the few remaining posts on Instagram that mention Zuzana Melicherová, Ricardo José’s partner, there are responses and references from friends, but not the statements from Zuzana that originated them. There are also no reports on their participation in tennis tournaments or posts about their very active lives full of luxury, parties, and eccentricities.
Although the brothers Ricardo and Santiago had been quite discreet, their family members kept constant updates and were portrayed by their many friends. All was reflected on social media, until they suspiciously vanished and nothing remained.
The awaited storm arrives
The Office of Foreign Assets Control of the Department of the Treasury, by means of executive order 13.692 (amended), sanctioned brothers Santiago José and Ricardo José Morón Hernández “because both supervise the financial mechanism of the illicit gold scheme directed by Nicolás Ernesto Maduro Guerra.” They are identified as the “czar of gold and coltan” and are accused of conducting illicit transactions, including the sale of gold extracted in Venezuela and shipped from the Central Bank of Venezuela.
The Department of the Treasury 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 use a variety of companies to conduct transactions and market 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 maneuvers. Ricardo is presented as the manager of high finance operations and merchandise transfers.”
Given the seriousness of their activities supporting the corruption of high-ranking officials in the regime, the Department of the Treasury froze all properties and interests of these individuals in the United States or in possession or control of Americans. OFAC regulations prohibit transactions by Americans involving any property or interests of the sanctioned individuals, either within or in transit to the United States. The sanctions affect the real estate and business enterprises that the Morón Hernández family (parents and siblings) were developing in Florida, Texas, and California. And worst of all, they jump from almost total anonymity to the worst kind of infamy.
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