According to the proletarian media in Cuba "Venezuelan Finance Minister Ali Rodriguez asserted on Friday [November 20] that placing four banks in administration responds to repeated violations of the homeland and international law, jeopardizing the sector's stability."
"Administration" is a kind of takeover on entities that doesn't necessarily entail expropriation with payment of fair compensation or confiscation without such compensation ... many options are available in an administration ... Article 116 of the Venezuelan Constitution gives the State the right to confiscate "private property" of natural or legal persons where the source of the property is government corruption or drug trafficking.
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The Friday press release from Finance Ministry didn't say exactly what the four banks were doing ... but the release makes it clear that the four banks were up to no good.
According to the release and press conference, the four banks -- Canarias, Bolivar, Provivienda, and Confederado -- "did not specify the origin of their funds, after increasing their capitals."
Well, now, this sounds just like the four banks were laundering money, because money laundering consists of hiding monies' origin or destination or both. In Venezuela, bourgeois money laundering operations are usually connected with drug trafficking and human trafficking. All of these four banks are also involved in the illegal foreign exchange market, but this involvement doesn't seem to be the genesis of the administrative takeover.
Ali Rodriguez also said "They [the four banks] also repeatedly violated the established percentages to stimulate productive sectors, including agriculture..." Evidently, these banks refused to lend to the bourgeoisie in the agricultural sector as well as to the rural proletariat. because lending to bourgeois farmers would have satisfied the "established percentages" the State prescribes. An increase in domestic food production is central to the revolutionary State's strategy of fighting the general effects of world capitalist crisis, inflation, and excessive dependence on imports.
Ali Rodriguez said "that the Venezuelan government guarantees the banking system's health, starting from respect for the rights of clients and creditors." The current world capitalist crisis started from fraud and irregularities in the financial sector and then spread out over the whole economy e.g. industrial, commercial, agricultural, landholding sectors, etc.
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