RIO: About 40 million Venezuelan bolivars or US$4 million, have been found and seized by the police in a favela of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
The police raid followed an anonymous call. They found the bills hidden in one of the vehicles belonging to one of the region’s main drug-traffickers in Caju favela, an urban neighborhood. The police seized the money after a shooting with drug-traffickers, but no one was reported injured.
The massive find is the latest example of the ongoing hoarding of Venezuela’s larger notes as part of the currency war on the revolutionary government. Caracas accuses the “financial mafias” of speculating and hoarding huge amounts of 100 bolivar bills.
Most commonly, bolivars are smuggled to and hoarded in Colombia as well as Brazil, and the situation has severely affected the value of Venezuela’s currency. Hoarding and the large flow of bolivars out of the country, combined with soaring inflation, has seen Venezuelan ATMs run out of cash, forcing them to deliver only smaller denominations bills to users, causing major inconveniences for the Venezuelan people.
The Venezuelan government says cross-border smugglers take advantage of price controls and subsidized exchange rates where goods are taken out of Venezuela to sell for higher profits elsewhere, contributing to shortages throughout the country.
