Free Republic

ENTEBBE, Uganda—The government of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is selling off his country’s gold reserves. Some of it has passed through a secretive operation in East Africa, a gambit that evades U.S. sanctions. On two early-March flights, at least 7.4 tons of gold with a market value over $300 million moved from Venezuela to a refinery in Uganda, say officials in Venezuela and Uganda, a foreign diplomat and Venezuelan opposition lawmakers, who have concluded Mr. Maduro’s government exported the ingots. The gold arrived on a Russian charter jetliner in two shipments at the international airport in Entebbe, says Ugandan national-police...

Business groups are warning that it might be impossible to comply with proposed rules requiring companies to track whether minerals came from combat-torn parts of Africa. But the two lawmakers behind the so-called "conflict minerals" provision are telling regulators to stand firm and issue strict rules as quickly as possible. The standoff played out this week in a series of comment letters filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which is required by the Dodd-Frank financial reform law to implement a provision forcing companies to take stock of how they obtain certain minerals. The provision is intended to make...