By Arthur Shaw
On May 19, 2010, the bourgeois regime in Washington D.C., under Obama, finally accused 16 people … almost all Venezuelan millionaires … of conspiracy to launder money from drug trafficking through Venezuela’s illegal or so-called ‘parallel’ foreign exchange market, a market which unofficially and illegally rigs the foreign exchange rate between the US dollar and Venezuelan bolivar.
Most of the crooked Venezuelan millionaires and their other accomplices were arrested in the Miami, Florida; New York City, and San Juan, Puerto Rico, and the search for additional racketeers is continuing.
The illegal currency market in the Venezuela routes its racketeering operations through US banks, especially the Bank of America, with the full knowledge of the US authorities, including the FBI, DEA, and federal reserve system officials. The Obama and Bush regimes in Washington for the most part looked or looks the other way because the illegal foreign exchange market in Venezuela is a key part of a US imperialist aggression against the Venezuelan Revolution. The illegal foreign exchange market in Venezuela aims, under imperialist supervision, to produce a currency crisis of the bolivar, the Venezuelan currency … that is, something like a 2000-point crash or sudden depreciation of the bolivar which may produce a collapse of the whole financial system in Venezuela.
To implement the plot to produce a currency crisis in Venezuela, US imperialists have recruited, trained, and financed about 100 Venezuelan quislings to run a huge currency trading operations. The I6 people arrested this week by the US authorities are mostly mere employees or mere representatives of these 100 big shot imperialist agents.
These 100 big crooks, the creme de la creme of the financial sector of the Venezuelan bourgeoisie, make their money chiefly in four ways.
(1) Laundering money from drug trafficking
(2) Laundering money from human trafficking
(3) Manipulating the size of difference (the “spread”) between the value of the dollar and value of the bolivar
(4) Speculating on the US dollar-denominated debt securities issued by the Venezuelan government.
The US imperialists are most interested in (3) …” the spread” … because it is by the use of this difference in value between the dollar and bolivar that the US imperialists dream of bringing down the Venezuelan economy through a collapse of the economy’s financial and monetary components.
But the 100 or so Venezuelan financiers who dominate the illegal foreign exchange market are more interested in (1) and (2) … that is, money laundering and drug trafficking … because the (1) and (2) generate bigger profits than (3). Thus, something of a contradiction has emerged between the interests of the US imperialists and the drug-trafficking, money-laundering elements in the financial sector of the Venezuelan bourgeoisie over the operation of illegal foreign exchange market which uses US bank for its infrastructure.
It is unlikely the Eric Holder, the US Attorney General and the highest law enforcement authority in the USA, will seriously pursue the cases against the 16 Venezuelans now under arrest in the USA, because the criminal element of the financial sector of the Venezuelan bourgeoisie may, in retaliation, sabotage the CIA’s conspiracy or intelligence operation to produce a currency crisis in Venezuela.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said that he will ask the US government for information related to the 16 people charged with money laundering from drug traffic through Venezuela’s illegal or” parallel” currency exchange market.
The imperialist regime in Washington always protects these drug traffickers and money launderers and, at the same time, the imperialist regime whines, snivels, nags, and bitches that the revolutionary government in Caracas isn’t doing enough to suppress drug trafficking.
