(Bloomberg Quint)
Patricia Laya November 01 2019, 10:48 PM
Hundreds of millions of dollars in cash has been shipped from Russia to Venezuela, providing a lifeline to the South American country as U.S. sanctions limit its access to the global financial system.
A total of $315 million of U.S. dollar and euro notes were sent in six separate shipments from Moscow to Caracas from May 2018 to April 2019, according to data obtained from ImportGenius, which compiled Russian customs records it obtains through private sources.
The cash came from lenders run by the countries’ governments and went to Venezuela’s development bank, the records show.
While the money could be for any number of things -- like Venezuela repatriating cash held overseas or dividends from a stake in a Moscow-based bank or revenue from sales of crude or gold -- the complex logistical feat shows one of the ways President Nicolas Maduro’s administration has sought to skirt aggressive U.S. financial sanctions.
As a consequence of the scrutiny, the central bank is conducting more transactions in cash, sometimes offering local clients access to euro bills.
ImportGenius’s data goes through April this year. That month, about $97 million in notes were sent in two loads from Moscow-based bank Evrofinance Mosnarbank to Venezuela’s Banco de Desarrollo Economico y Social de Venezuela, or Bandes.
Evrofinance is a joint venture between Bandes and Russia’s state property management agency.
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