Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is reportedly planning a government takeover of his country’s gold mining industry and has begun taking cash and gold from Swiss and English banks and placing it in banks in Brazil, China and Russia.
Though an official statement has yet to be made on the matter, Bloomberg is reporting Chavez has repatriated $11 billion worth of gold in order to “safeguard the country from the [global] economic crisis, [while nationalizing] the local gold industry.”
Chavez, who had just returned home from Cuba after another round of chemotherapy, has said he wishes to cut Venezuela’s dependency on the U.S. dollar, and has reportedly called on the country’s central bank to remove money currently in U.S. institutions.
Recent documents from the country’s foreign minister state that Libya’s European-held reserves have been “pillaged” by “the powers of the North” and Chavez wants to ensure Venezuela is not held at the mercy of similar actions in the future.
Wednesday, he also shared that he plans to take control of the country’s gold industry as a whole to prevent illegal mining and boost Venezuela’s reserves.
