Venezuela’s Trade Scheme With Turkey Is Enriching a Mysterious Maduro Crony
Investigators say retrofitted criminal networks are being used to trade gold for the food that’s propping up the regime.
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, right, presents the Order of the Liberator to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at Miraflores Palace in Caracas in December 2018.
Photographer: Cem Oksuz/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
In the late afternoon of July 15, 2016, a cluster of staffers inside the Turkish Embassy in Caracas struggled to make sense of the images from home flashing across their televisions and computer screens. Military trucks were blocking a bridge over the Bosporus, tanks were rolling into the Istanbul airport, and smoke was rising from the streets of Ankara. As best they could tell, a group within the Turkish military was trying to overthrow the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Imdat Oner, the chargé d’affaires of Turkey’s diplomatic mission in Venezuela, was straining to hear a live news report when a telephone rang, pulling him away from his colleagues. On the line was Samuel Moncada, Venezuela’s deputy foreign minister. Oner knew him, but not well. He didn’t feel he knew any of the Venezuelans well, because the relationship between Turkey and Nicolás Maduro’s government seemed to him superficial, at best.