In April 2025, Maduro appointed his former sister-in-law Laura Guerra Angulo as the new president of the Central Bank of Venezuela, thus reinforcing the monetary authority’s lack of independence. By then, the gap between the official dollar exchange rate and the currency’s price on the parallel market was already beginning to widen. By May 9, the gap reached 24% and continued to grow in the following weeks, reaching 40%. In a country with a de facto dollarized economy, these fluctuations have a strong impact on the population and economic indicators, and the government knows it. A month later, on June 9, the general prosecutor announced that approximately 50 people had already been arrested for “illegal foreign currency sales.” He added that those arrested “through various means, including social media, publish and carry out transactions in foreign currency at an exchange rate different from the official one, undermining the country’s financial and economic system,” as if the economy revolved around social media or people preferred to pay a higher dollar just because someone posted it on Instagram.
The arrests took place in the states of Aragua, Barinas, Lara, Zulia, La Guaira, Yaracuy, and the city of Caracas. As is customary, the general prosecutor released a long list of crimes allegedly committed by these individuals, including terrorism, money laundering, criminal conspiracy, deceptive offers, and undue recruitment.
The arrests did not stem the gap, nor did the rise of the official dollar, demonstrating that the causes of this increase are not social media. On June 11, the official dollar crossed the 100-bolivar barrier, a record broken by the parallel dollar in March. The following day, new arrests were made, this time affecting economists, university professors, and even Rodrigo Cabezas, a former finance minister under the Chavista regime and now a Maduro critic.
The legal status of these individuals is uncertain, and only the names of 20 of the 58 detainees as of June 12 have been released. All are said to be at the headquarters of the Bolivarian National Police, located in the La Yaguara sector of Caracas, but details regarding communication with family members, the appointment of lawyers, and other rights as defendants are unknown. In Cabezas’ case, his family has reported that he is missing after his arrest in the city of Maracaibo, from where he was transferred to Caracas, with his whereabouts unknown. Unofficially, there has been news of the arrest of other university professors about whom there is no further information because their families have requested that details not be disclosed, hoping that this will resolve their arbitrary detention, even though silence has rarely worked in cases where the deprivation of liberty is politically motivated.
Just as it suppresses information about the detainees, the government hides the state of the economy. Thus, opacity continues to be the main characteristic of government management, accompanied by repression against those who inform. Referring to the detained professionals, the Venezuelan Finance Observatory stated that “The work of these professionals is essential for the design of evidence-based public policies, the strengthening of institutional transparency, and the exercise of citizens’ right to be informed. Attacking those who generate and share reliable economic data not only violates fundamental democratic principles but also limits the collective understanding of the national reality.” It should be remembered that the Central Bank of Venezuela has not published figures related to economic indicators since October 2024, fueling the need for information from independent sources. There is no point in shooting the messenger in the face of a skyrocketing dollar and declining economic indicators.
As the repression expands its range of victims, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights gave a preview of what his presentation on Venezuela will be like at the interactive dialogue to be held on June 27 before the Human Rights Council, stating, while presenting his global update report at the 56th session, “I am concerned about torture and ill-treatment in detention centers and the violation of due process.”
The June 27 meeting in Geneva should be the opportune setting for democratic countries to raise their voices in condemnation of this new escalation of repression, in parallel with the resurgence of the complex humanitarian emergency.