A person counts US dollar bills. Photo: AFP/File photo.
Misión Verdad – May 29, 2025
Venezuelan Attorney General Tarek William Saab has reported the arrest of a citizen identified as Carlos Andrés Pérez Abreu, who is being charged with creating and managing the Instagram account “Monitor Dólar Vzla,” which appears to summarize black market dollar prices according to various exchanges and crypto operators.
Saab made the announcement via social media this Wednesday, May 28, that the citizen detained by officers of the Bolivarian National Police (PNB) will be charged with “terrorism, money laundering, unlawful acquisition, deceptive offers, and criminal conspiracy.”
During his arrest, the defendant was also found to hold an identification card as an official of the Executive Directorate of the Judiciary, attached to the Judicial Branch.
The Attorney General explained that Pérez Abreu “made false publications, exorbitantly increasing the price of the dollar, in violation of the BCV’s established exchange rate,” and that his objective with these actions was to “destabilize the economy.”
Since the middle of last year, this Instagram account and others like it have presented excessively distorted information about the alleged value of the parallel [black market] dollar, in many cases altering the exchange rate data on which they supposedly base their summary.
On other occasions, they have substituted or selected the exchange markers they use for reference, presenting the worst quotes and constructing an “average” that is always on the rise.
This trend has worsened in recent months, to the point where the exchange rate differential between the black market rate reported by Monitor Dólar and the Central Bank of Venezuela (BCV) has reached 50%.
For years, the account, with more than one million followers, has posted fraudulent dollar quotes every weekday at 9:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m. But since Pérez Abreu’s arrest was announced, it has not made any updates or new posts.
Other similar accounts referencing the average price of the black market dollar, such as @enparalelovzla_oficial_, with 1.3 million followers, have not posted any quotes in the last week either.
Security operation
On the evening of Wednesday, May 28, the minister of the interior, justice, and peace, Diosdado Cabello, revealed that at least 20 more people had been arrested for their involvement in characterizing the black market dollar.
“We’ve been working for days against these people who have a digital platform to say that the ‘dollar is worth I don’t know how much’,” he said during his weekly program Con el Mazo Dando. “The first [platform] has already fallen, the first infrastructure; 20 people have been arrested.”
He added that “an investigation was conducted as it should be, quietly, without any kind of abuse. We caught them and brought them before the Public Prosecutor’s Office and the courts, and let justice handle whatever it needs to handle.”
Context around the black market dollar
In recent months, the parallel exchange rate established and spread digitally has reached exorbitant levels. But the problem goes far beyond Instagram accounts. In recent months, an app called “Al Cambio” has also emerged, reflecting various quotes for commercial activities, using the rate released by the BCV (Central Bank of Venezuela), the Parallel Index, and an intermediate value called “Average.”
In the real economy, a vast portion of informal buying and selling of goods and services has been governed by this Average rate, tacitly acknowledging the fact that the spread between the BCV and the Parallel Exchange is unmanageable.
Meanwhile, purchases in almost all formal businesses and payment terminals are governed by the BCV rate. However, the exchange rate differential ends up creating a general distortion, especially when retailers adjust reference prices in dollars upwards to try to close the gap.
This trend has increased since mid-2024, and as such, it is particularly important to note the coincidence of this phenomenon with the events of the political context at that time.
Attorney General Saab’s allegations about the use of these mechanisms as a component of “destabilization” have been based on the failed coup operations carried out by far-right extremist groups, which affected the electoral results of the July 28 presidential elections.
Because of this, analysts are interpreting the disruption of the exchange rate system to be deliberate, for inducing people’s anxiety and worsening the conditions coupled with political unrest.
In January of this year, two waves of increases in the unofficial vote counts occurred. The first was characterized by uncertainty surrounding the presidential inauguration on January 10, wherein María Corina Machado and Edmundo González had promised their rise to Miraflores and attempted to build a sense of mass movement, which failed.
Then came the Donald Trump administration’s announcements of tightening criminal sanctions against the Venezuelan economy, most notably by ending the General License under which the US empire’s company Chevron had operated in Venezuela in recent years.
From the perspective of economic analysts, the end of the license for Chevron (and other European companies) suggests a potential drop in the availability of foreign currency for Venezuela and a deficit in the supply of the US entity’s currency in the foreign exchange rate market.
This has fostered a climate of pessimism and uncertainty, prompting individuals to purchase foreign currency on the black market, exacerbating the trend. The administrators of these accounts have exploited this trend to artificially boost black market exchange rates.
The effects of these distortions are multifaceted, one being the rise in the value of the US dollar in cash. This has led to the currency becoming an object of speculation, sold retail between individuals at high rates. But, in many cases, the economic situation calls for preserving it as a savings asset, which halts its circulation and exacerbates the “scarcity” of said paper currency.
Another notable phenomenon is the increase in purchases in bolivars at formal commercial establishments that use the BCV rate.
Economist Asdrúbal Oliveros reported that, according to a recent study conducted by his firm Ecoanalítica, 84% of transactions in the country are made in bolivars. He noted that “this is the first time, since we conducted this study, that the level of foreign currency transactions is at its lowest.”
He also stated that only 16% of routine commercial transactions and operations are now conducted in dollars, and compared the figure with that of March 2021; according to his records, the use of the US currency accounted for 67% of purchase and sale transactions in the country’s commercial establishments at the time.
(Misión Verdad) by Ana Perdigón with Orinoco Tribune content
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/JRE/AU
Misión Verdad
Misión Verdad is a Venezuelan investigative journalism website with a socialist perspective in defense of the Bolivarian Revolution
