AGR General Manager Cherry Anne Dacdac says the company hasn’t processed smuggled or conflict gold and declines to comment on the March shipments. She says all AGR’s business is legal and that in a March 26 management meeting it agreed it won’t accept transactions related to Venezuela.
AGR has processed and exported more than 38 tons of gold since it started operations, Ms. Dacdac says. The scale of its operation helped drive gold in 2018 to overtake coffee as the leading export from Uganda, which mines little of it.
The refinery appears to act with support from Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, court and other documents reviewed by the Journal suggest. A spokesman for Mr. Museveni says the president “backs the plant just as he does all other investors” in his quest to transform Uganda’s economy.
The Maduro government’s prior gold sales have been an open point of contention. Between late 2017 and Feb. 1, 2019, the central bank sold at least 73.3 tons of gold, with a market value of around $3 billion, to companies in the United Arab Emirates and Turkey, the National Assembly’s finance commission announced in February.
The White House on Nov. 1 announced sanctions intended to stop Venezuelan gold sales. Since then, several dozen more tons have been removed from the central bank and secretly exported, say opposition lawmakers and a person familiar with the bank’s reserves. The bank for weeks was left without power and water.
“It’s a fire sale,” says one of the lawmakers, Ángel Alvarado, who is on the finance commission. “The regime is scraping the barrel, selling off anything of value to keep itself afloat.”
Recently reported Maduro was looking for an exit before his Military turns against him.......not unusual for these dictators to move the nations wealth into other countries coffers for their easy access before they leave. Guess they figure they’re entitled to it. A bird in hand so to speak.....