The conviction of a Florida businessman for smuggling gold into the United States purportedly imported from Curacao may provide clues as to what had been the intended pathway for 476 pounds of the precious metal spirited out of this country before it was stolen in 2012 from a Guyanese fishing boat which was docked on the Dutch Caribbean island.
Despite the US$11.5m value of the gold and the reality that there was a major smuggling operation from Guyana, none of the governments since the heist have made any serious effort to determine who was behind the elaborate operation or to retrieve any of the gold that might have been found by the Curacao authorities.
According to the January 27, 2022 online edition of the Cayman Compass, Jesus Gabriel Rodriguez, Jr. admitted in a South Florida district court that he facilitated the importation of thousands of kilogrammes of gold flown to Miami, Florida, from Curacao, knowing that the customs paperwork falsely showed the gold’s origin as being from the Cayman Islands. The smuggling operation was said to be worth US$140m.
The Cayman Compass report said that Rodriguez, 45, is the former CEO of Transvalue, a South Florida armoured vehicle company that, among other things, transported gold shipments from Miami International Airport in Miami to various refineries in South Florida.
According to the report, one such refinery was owned by NTR Metals, a Dallas, Texas-headquartered company that is now called Elemetal LLC.
According to a criminal complaint affidavit filed in the case, NTR was allegedly involved in highly suspicious transactions, between 2013 and 2017, including the importation of more than $3.6 billion in gold from Latin America and the Caribbean.
The report said that because the international gold trade is a common way to launder illegally mined gold, narcotics and other criminal proceeds, US precious metals dealers are required by federal law to establish anti-money laundering programmes.
NTR had anti-money laundering policies that prohibited it from buying gold from Curacao, a country that has no gold mines but is commonly used as a transit point for gold illegally mined in, and smuggled out of, other countries.
The US Department of Justice (DOJ) said in a press release that Rodriguez conspired with buyers who earned volume-based commissions by procuring gold for NTR Metals.
Specifically, “Rodriguez helped co-conspirators dodge NTR Metals’ anti-money laundering policy and get the gold past U.S. Customs by working to conceal the gold’s origins and connections to Curacao”, the DOJ said
According to the Cayman Compass, the complaint affidavit alleged that between March 2015 and September 2016, NTR imported gold worth more than $141 million into the US from a company located in the Cayman Islands, only identified as Company A.
Although the gold was originally declared to have come from Curacao, it was later reported to US Customs to have come from the Cayman Islands.
“Rodriguez and Transvalue assisted NTR salespersons and Company A in deceiving US Customs by facilitating the movement of the gold through customs at [Miami airport] both when it transited between Curacao and the Caymans, and again when it arrived back in Miami from the Caymans. Rodriguez also assisted the scheme by having his company, Trans-value, physically transport the gold from [Miami airport] to NTR when it arrived from the Caymans,” the affidavit said.
Several cooperating witnesses gave evidence against Rodriguez, implicating him in the scheme.
According to the affidavit, filed by an FBI agent, Company A owned a facility in Cayman and provided NTR with gold that was imported from Curacao.
To conceal that the gold originated from there, Company A flew the gold from Curacao to Miami with couriers who hand-carried the precious metal on these flights.
Although the gold cleared customs in Miami, the couriers would immediately board another flight to the Cayman Islands, before returning once again to Miami from Grand Cayman.
These flights served the purpose of reporting to US Customs that the gold came from the Cayman Islands.
The Cayman Compass report said that the co-conspirators were all aware that the gold was likely being illegally mined and smuggled out of Venezuela, the complaint said.
One cooperating witness told investigators that one of the shipments to Company A reportedly smelled of gasoline, suggesting it had been transported in a gas tank and shipped to Curacao by boat.
“In another instance, Company A’s representative admitted to [the cooperating witness] that the gold sold to NTR was from Venezuela and would transit through Curacao.”
The same representative adverted to Venezuelan suppliers when discussing price locks for expected gold deliveries, the complaint alleged.
The report said that the affidavit alleged that Company A also bought gold in Africa for NTR and similarly disguised the gold’s source by routing it through Cayman to avoid openly violating NTR’s policy not to accept gold from Africa.
US Customs import and export data also reflected that “the booming gold trade between Miami and the Cayman Islands in 2015 and 2016 existed almost solely as a byproduct of the steps taken by [the cooperating witnesses, Rodriguez and Company A] to conceal the origins of gold that originated in Curacao, and Venezuela before that,” the complaint said.
The report said that Rodriguez agreed to forfeit $267,817 as part of his guilty plea. The amount is equivalent to Transvalue’s and his personal gains from the scheme.
Rodriguez is scheduled for sentencing on 4 April and faces up to 24 months in federal prison.
In March 2017, the report said that Elemetal (NTR) pleaded guilty to charges of failing to maintain an appropriate anti-money laundering programme and agreed to forfeit $15 million.
Three former NTR Metals employees in Miami pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering and were sentenced in January 2018 to 72, 80 and 90 months in prison, respectively
In 2012, the 476 pounds of gold, believed to have originated from Guyana, was stolen from the Guyanese fishing boat Summer Bliss, which was docked in Curacao.
Based on the information this newspaper received then, the vessel was on its way to Miami but made a stop in Curaçao. The gold was valued at approximately US$11.5 million.
News agency Amigoe had reported that six men, armed with guns and wearing masks and hoodies along with police jackets, stormed the boat. At gunpoint, they pushed the 51-year-old captain as well as the three Guyanese crewmen onto the ground. The robbers knew their way around the vessel as they walked directly to the three metal boxes with the gold bars and spent only five minutes removing them.
It was suspected that the gold was smuggled in batches from Guyana to Suriname over a period of time, after which it was melted into gold bars, loaded in the Summer Bliss and transported to the neighbouring country. Another theory is that they were loaded into a vessel right in Guyana before it set sail.
It was believed that some of the gold was later retrieved in Curacao but the various governments here have never concertedly pursued this matter with the authorities on the island. When it took office in 2015 the APNU+AFC government has lamented the scale of gold smuggling from the country but over the five years it was in office very little was achieved in cracking down on this.
