Bungling bureaucrats at both Venezuela's Foreign Ministry (MRE) and the country's Basic Industries & Mining Ministry have been left with Russian egg on their faces and internal administration knives are out to perform surgery on convenient scapegoats to cover-up the incredible mess that both ministries have found themselves in.
Just this weekend, President Hugo Chavez Frias was caught in a lie foisted on him by Foreign Ministry mandarins who had had to hustle 12 diplomatic staff on a flight out of Houston just minutes before midnight on Friday, arriving at Caracas (Simon Bolivar) international airport in the early hours of Saturday morning, hours ahead of a midnight Saturday deadline imposed by the US State Department.
Conveniently, Chavez said that he had fired Consul General Antonio Padrino for a co*k-up that Padrino, himself, had been at pains to 'de-co*k-up' after bungling Washington embassy pen-pushers had side-stepped international protocol and drafted in family and friends of former Venezuelan Ambassador to Washington, Bernardo Alvarez Herrera, to key positions at the Houston Consulate over Padrino's head. Presumably thinking that they could behave with impunity just as though they were back in Caracas the new consulate staffers went ahead with a move of the consulate to new premises without the protocol permission of the US State Department ... which, admittedly, was just biding its time for any excuse to get back at Chavez for the rude expulsion of US Ambassador Patrick Duddy and the very undiplomatic treatment of Duddy's wife, Mary, in the inevitable aftermath of Chavez' edict.
With the expelled 12 now back in Caracas, Chavez is trying to tell the world that they weren't officially expelled ... that they had been recalled by Caracas (a minor matter of semantics) ahead of the expulsion deadline ... but it's clear that incompetent desk pilots at the Casa Amarilla (Yellow House) HQ of the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry had passed purposefully incorrect information up the line through mini-bus driving Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro to "the Boss" Chavez with the ultimate branding of Padrino as a scapegoat "traitor" who had apparently dropped Venezuela's name and reputation in deep doo-dooh!
With a chunk of the Russian fleet currently plowing its way through the Straits of Gibraltar on a heading for southern Caribbean shores, the United States has deployed one of its own naval juggernauts on a "humanitarian mission" to neighboring Guyana (the country east of Venezuela!) although everyone "knows" that its a surveillance operation to keep the last vestiges of the Bush regime informed of what is happening in what the United States claims to be its own backyard.
The gigantic faux-pas committed by both Chavez and Minister Sanz was to boastfully project the imminent seizure and hand-over to Russia of huge chunks of Venezuela's massive gold mining resources to the Russians in an apparent rout to Venezuelan Guayana Corporation (CVG) contractor, Canadian (Toronto-based) Crystallex International, which has a cast iron mine-operating contract with the Venezuelan state-owned entity to mine gold estimated at well over 20 million troy ounces over a 20-40 years period.
A senior Venezuelan official has confided in VHeadline Venezuela News that he had been taken in by the name of the "Russian" company that is widely believed to be the beneficiary of Chavez' and Sanz' largesse ... RUS-ORO (loosely translatable Rus[sian] Gold!). "Very interesting. I guess the name RUS-ORO fooled me too into thinking it was a Russian company ... but how does this leave your favorite company, Crystallex?"
That the question that must now be answered by the dogsbodys at Mibam or even by Chavez himself since he will undoubtedly be seeing red over having been "misinformed" about Rusoro's Russian status by the intelligencia at MRE!
For, while Rusoro is indeed in a 50/50 "socialist" partnership with state-owned CVG subsidiary CVG-Minerven. and has been largely hailed in Venezuela as a Russian company, it is in fact based in Vancouver-Canada and an elementary sweep of information sources readily available to anyone with a computer keyboard and the basic criteria of how to use it, shows that:
Rusoro Mining Ltd (RML) was taken public on the Canadian (Toronto) exchange 3-4 years ago to focus on mining assets. It is a Canadian listed, and Canadian domiciled company, based in Vancouver. The main shareholders are listed as GoldFields of South Africa and North American investors (institutional and retail). The ex-pat Russian Agapov family has a stake of about 10-15% and many of management are former Placer Dome executives, a number of whom were involved in Las Cristinas when it was in a MINCA joint venture with Placer Dome which has caused much friction with the Venezuelan government. RML recently received an investment/loan from the UK based Peter Hambro mining company. Peter Hambro is a British business man who has been doing business with the Russian oligarchy for about 10 years and has been taking over privatized gold assets in Russia. RML had to raise funds for their El Choco, and El Callao assets in Venezuela to meet projected growth (that's why the involvement of Hambro) and an advisory board was formed with former mining engineers who had been involved in Russian mining projects.
VHeadline has unsuccessfully been at pains to contact Rusoro (RML) president George Salamis -- who is currently in Venezuela having attended a Venezuela-Russia Mining Forum -- but a staffer in Vancouver told us they're as surprised as anyone else over Chavez' very widely publicized statement that "Russian" Rusoro was being offered Venezuela's gold mining industry lock, stock and barrel.
The bitter fact is that Rusoro would probably NOT have the capacity to take Chavez/Sanz up on their generous offer but even a suspicion of links to the Russian oligarchy, and the thought that a Venezuela-Rusoro deal might, possibly, be misconstrued as a back-door effort being manipulated by Placer Dome/Gold Fields and others to regain a stranglehold over Venezuela's gold interests, would be enough to to send Chavez/Sanz into shock trauma over the ignorant and/or possibly deliberate (?) misinformation in their pre-Russian high-level visit briefings.
In conclusion another government insider told VHeadline Venezuela News this morning that "the Russian have the business (their own) well under control ... so NOT to worry about Rusoro. Putin and Medvedev are very sharp, and they know what they're doing to milk the cash cow. So forget Rusoro! Sanz is Chavez' buffoon ... they probably feed him the wrong data so he can make an ass of himself!"
