On July 23, the U.S. Department of the Treasury imposed sanctions on brothers Santiago José Morón Hernández and Ricardo José Morón Hernández for facilitating illegal financial operations supporting the Venezuelan government, marking a significant blow to the funds managed by high-ranking officials, reported La Gran Aldea.
The announcement states that the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), which is part of the Department of the Treasury, sanctioned the brothers Santiago José Morón Hernández, a lawyer, and Ricardo José Morón Hernández, an engineer and stockbroker, for providing support to Nicolás Ernesto Maduro Guerra and his regime’s corrupt activities. This action aligns with Executive Order (EO) 13692, as amended.
According to the Treasury Department, the sanctioned individuals “distribute assets for Maduro and his family globally. Maduro Guerra hired Santiago and Ricardo to conduct business on his behalf. The two brothers utilized various companies to carry out transactions. In addition, Santiago is Maduro Guerra’s chief assistant, accompanying him regularly, while Ricardo manages the operational activities.”
“Separately, Maduro Guerra, Santiago, Ricardo, and their closest allies play central roles in Venezuela’s gold industry. Maduro Guerra is accused of illegal transactions, including the sale of gold mined in Venezuela and exported from the Central Bank of Venezuela, which was sanctioned by OFAC on April 17, 2019, under EO 13850. Santiago and Ricardo oversee the financial mechanisms for the illicit gold scheme,” the OFAC indicated.
“As a result of this action, all properties and interests owned by these individuals within the United States or in the possession or control of U.S. persons are blocked and must be reported to OFAC. Furthermore, any entity owned, directly or indirectly, 50% or more by the designated individuals is also blocked. OFAC regulations generally prohibit all dealings by U.S. persons or within (or in transit) to the United States involving any property or interest in the property of blocked or designated individuals,” the announcement states.
In the mechanism established by the Maduro government to process and market gold from the Orinoco Mining Arc, six joint ventures stand out, from which a portion of the production goes to the Central Bank of Venezuela (BCV) and another is exported through clandestine, undeclared routes to allied countries such as Iran and Turkey. These companies were created or agreed upon between the government and individuals linked to the top echelons. One of the key operators in this scheme has been “Nicolasito,” and on the boards of these companies are recognized friends and partners of the presidential family.
Key players in this business are the Morón Hernández brothers and Colombian Alex Nain Saab Morán. They also have frontmen assigned from the children of Cilia Flores, Yoswal Alexander and Yosser Daniel Gavidia Flores, such as Mario Enrique Bonilla Vallera, a fugitive from U.S. justice, and Raúl Eduardo Saavedra Leterni.
The Morón Hernández brothers hail from Maracaibo in the Zulia state. Since 1987, they have appeared alongside their father as founders of the company Cresmo. Since 2007, they have carried out projects in Fondur, the Maracaibo Metro, Ducolsa, and the Ministry of Prisons according to the National Contractors Registry (RNC), despite a history of contract breaches, unfinished works, and labor payment irregularities, with seven lawsuits filed in courts.
“Bonilla Vallera and Yoswal Gavidia Flores studied together at Santa María University and graduated in May 2013 in the XVIII promotion, with a mention in Audiovisual Communication. They had their own program on the National Assembly’s radio station 102.3 FM when it was under Chavista control, following the expropriation of Circuito Nacional Belfort, and shared the same circle of friends,” journalist Patricia Marcano from Armando.info reports. She also worked for Cilia Flores from January 2013 in the Attorney General’s Office according to her data from the Venezuelan Institute of Social Security (IVSS) until June 2014.
Saavedra Leterni, a lawyer, appears as a partner or legal representative in 13 of the 25 companies linked to Bonilla. “This is a business relationship that stems from a close friendship, and they have left traces on social media. Both have celebrated together at the birthdays of Maduro’s stepchildren and with Maduro Guerra himself; all contemporaries having been born in 1990,” Marcano states.
Other companies are managed by Eduardo José Rivas, a member of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) from Bolívar state, who, without any track record in the mining sector, serves as president of the Domingo Sifontes Mining Industrial Complex in El Callao, with a contribution of 30 million euros. He also owns Inversiones y Representaciones Glenduar, where he controls the majority shares, and is the president of the Manuel Piar Complex in Puerto Ordaz. Former Director of the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service (Sebin), Manuel Cristopher Figuera, declared to Armando.info that Rivas “is a trusted man of Nicolasito.”
Another company associated with the Domingo Sifontes Complex is Corporación Petroglobal, owned by Bonilla and Saavedra, according to reports from Armando.info.
Journalist Patricia Marcano notes that Bonilla Vallera was identified in 2018 as a frontman for Cilia’s children in a U.S. investigation conducted by the Southern District Court under the name “Operation Money Flight,” which followed the trail of $1.2 billion laundered from Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA), for which he was sentenced to 20 years in prison. He was declared a fugitive by U.S. justice for transferring $200 million from oil funds to the stepchildren of a high-ranking Venezuelan official as part of a money laundering network.
Since late 2015, due to the collapse of the oil industry, the government, led by Nicolás Maduro, found in gold extraction a quick way to generate new revenues in foreign currency.
Thus, after expropriating large tech companies like Crystallex and Gold Reserve in 2008, a new strategy began, calling foreign companies from countries such as China, Russia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Africa, Palestine, Germany, and Switzerland for projects referred to as the “Mining Motor of the Bolivarian Economic Agenda.”
On February 24, 2016, Decree No. 2,248 was issued, published in Official Gazette No. 40,855, which created the Arco Minero del Orinoco National Strategic Development Zone, encompassing an area of 111,800 square kilometers (km²) in Bolívar state to exploit gold, iron, bauxite, coltan, diamonds, manganese, and granite.
The plan is projected under the framework of joint ventures, and by the end of 2016, the creation of joint ventures named: Siembra Minera, Minera Metales del Sur, Minera Ecosocialista Parguaza, and Minera Ecosocialista Oro Azul to exploit coltan was formalized in the Official Gazette.
A common trait in this new plan is that the Maduro government focused the gold and diamond mining of the Orinoco Mining Arc on “small-scale” or artisanal mining. At that time, following the exit of large companies, the area had been overrun by around 40,000 artisanal miners. This method of gold exploitation was aggressive, lacking cutting-edge technology, with the use of substances like mercury and cyanide without environmental control mechanisms, directly affecting the vegetation layer of the region’s forests and rivers. The devastation even reached protected areas and forest reserves.
Beginning in April 2017, shipments of gold bars from purchases made by the Venezuelan Guayana Corporation (CVG) subsidiary Minerven from small-scale mining production started entering the vaults of the BCV through the Popular Mining Council in the Orinoco Mining Arc, and payments were made through the Economic and Social Development Bank of Venezuela (Bandes).
Undoubtedly, the most significant mining companies receiving the gold material for transformation into gold bars were those created for this purpose by the Maduro government, assigned to frontmen and friends.
At the same time, after the creation of the Orinoco Mining Arc, the small gold miners in southern Bolívar state were subjected to gangs, military sectors, and irregular groups (FARC and ELN) that took control of the area. They began to compete for control over the deposits and extraction routes, generating anarchy with numerous massacres reported in the region.
Colombian financier Alex Saab, on the verge of being extradited to the U.S. from Cape Verde, associated with the Local Supply and Production Committees (CLAP) program, also connected through various companies to manage the gold business and other areas.
According to reports published by Armando.info, a presidential decree on July 20, 2018, officially designated Adrián Antonio Perdomo Mata (Official Gazette No. 41,472) as president of the General Mining Company of Venezuela (GVG Minerven).
One month later, on August 31, another decree from Maduro authorized the creation of Mibiturven, S.A., a binational joint venture between Minerven and a Turkish registered company named Marilyns Proje Yatirim, S.A.
Perdomo Mata was an executive at the company Trading Energy and Coal (Trenaco), registered in Caracas in October 2014 and dissolved two years later. He served as the general sub-manager of that firm, a mirror of the same name in Colombia, which is also now liquidated.
The Venezuelan subsidiary of Trenaco and the Global Fund for Prefabricated Housing Construction, both linked to Saab’s businesses, are both located in the Galipán Center and registered the same phone number with the RNC.
Journalist Roberto Deniz highlights that Perdomo Mata is listed as president of Aleaciones Metálicas del Pacífico, S.A., a Panamanian firm created on August 5, 2015, where he shares the board with Amir Nassar Tayupe, Saab’s lawyer in Venezuela, who represents him in a lawsuit against four journalists from Armando.info.
In August 2015, PDVSA made one of its largest bids in years public: a multimillion-dollar project in the Orinoco Belt, the world’s largest crude oil reservoir, aimed at bolstering its declining production, according to an investigation by Reuters.
Out of nowhere, Trenaco, a small transport and oil trading company from Colombia with no relevant experience and based in Switzerland but managed from Colombia, outperformed major oil service companies like Halliburton, Schlumberger, and Weatherford to win a $4.5 billion contract, according to a PDVSA document.
Saab never appeared on the board of Trenaco, “but a July 2016 investigation by Reuters revealed that he was in full control of Trenaco after reviewing internal correspondence and WhatsApp audio files involving Saab,” Deniz reported.
In November 2011, Saab signed an agreement with his construction firm, based in Bogotá, called Fondo Global de Construcción, to build social housing in Venezuela; he even appeared on state television signing the agreement alongside Chávez and Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos.
The former Colombian president clarified to the newspaper El Tiempo that “Saab never signed on behalf of Colombia. When he went to sign, the representative of that company, that guy Alex Saab, appeared, whom we did not know. There was never any agreement, no arrangement with the Colombian government.”