Venezuela closes border to shield currency

By Senabri Silvestre

SANTO DOMINGO, Dom. Rep.

Venezuela’s highest-value bill, the 100-bolivar banknote, will begin to be taken out of circulation Tuesday as President Nicolas Maduro has announced a three-day shutdown of the border with Colombia to stem currency smuggling.

Maduro said the border measure was aimed at targeting the “mafias that seek to destabilize the nation's economy".

He told a local television station Monday that illegal groups were taking bolivars to Colombia “in a massive way”.

Maduro said he showed his Colombian opposite number Juan Manuel Santos, “evidence and photos" of how Venezuelan money was being trafficked across the border, and transferred to Brazil and Europe.

The 100-bolivar banknote will be supplanted by higher-domination bills due Thursday, the president announced over the weekend. The move will help fight against contraband of the bills at the border, according to Maduro, while critics say it will exacerbate the government's cash crisis.

Venezuelan Foreign Ministry on Monday expressed its deep concern about actions carried out by "criminal subjects against the Venezuelan currency and economy”.

The cash-strapped South American country is engulfed in an economic and political bottleneck as citizens complain of a lack of basic supplies and medicine, fueling calls for a recall of Maduro.

In October, the parliament voted to try the president, accusing him of constitutional breaches. Maduro responded by accusing the MPs of staging a coup attempt.