CARACAS, (Reuters) – Phantom businesses account for about 40 percent of buyers of dollars through Venezuela’s currency control system this year in a massive fraud costing the OPEC nation billions of dollars, the country’s intelligence chief said.
Miguel Rodriguez Torres, who is also interior minister, said a new crackdown on the currency con would spare neither corrupt officials nor unscrupulous businessmen.
State currency agency Cadivi sells dollars at the official rate of 6.3 bolivars through a cumbersome application process.
But greenbacks fetch 10 times that on the black market – offering astronomical returns for well-connected fraudsters who offer bribes to Cadivi officials to obtain licences and buy dollars for largely fictitious imports.
The government says Cadivi has sold some $33 billion to local businesses so far this year to import goods, and officials have acknowledged that corrupt Caidivi officials take kickbacks from those.
“From the information I have, I think ‘briefcase companies’ must be reaching more than 40 percent,” Rodriguez, an army major-general, told Reuters in an interview using the local term for phantom or shell firms.
“What a lot did was just take the dollars and bring absolutely nothing, or bring half of the goods, or falsify the prices … They did thousands of tricks.”
All businessmen who received Cadivi dollars in 2012 and 2013 would have to produce tax and sales documents to prove they had in fact imported goods, he said.
“It’s a massive drain. A disaster for the economy … Without a doubt, there must be (Cadivi) officials who are accomplices.”
President Nicolas Maduro blames the problem on capitalist profiteers he says are in league with right-wing politicians and ideological adversaries in Washington.
But he steadfastly refuses to consider lifting the mechanism that is seen as the lynchpin of late socialist leader Hugo Chavez’s state-driven economic policy.
