VENEZUELA
Seizing Assets
Venezuela arrested 11 banking executives and announced it would temporarily take control of the country’s leading private bank on Thursday, echoing last month’s sudden arrests of two Venezuelan executives working in the country for US oil major Chevron Corp.
The arrests of the Banesco executives and seizure of the bank’s operations are intended to stop “attacks” against the country’s plunging currency, the bolivar, Reuters cited the government as saying.
President Nicolas Maduro has blamed an “economic war” marshaled by his enemies for hyperinflation and the collapse of the bolivar, but his critics say the problems stem from his incompetence and failed socialist policies.
“We have determined the (executives’) presumed responsibility for a series of irregularities, for aiding and concealing attacks against the Venezuelan currency with the aim of demolishing the Venezuelan currency,” Chief Prosecutor Tarek Saab said in a televised press conference where he announced the arrests.
Banesco’s President Juan Carlos Escotet, who lives in Spain, called the arrests “disproportionate,” while Maduro’s political opponents said they were another sign of his turn to authoritarianism.
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