The CEO of a Florida armoured truck company has been charged with allegedly facilitating the illegal importation of more than US$140 million of gold from Venezuela, via Curacao and the Cayman Islands.
South Florida federal prosecutors have charged Miami-Dade County business owner Jesus Gabriel Rodriguez Jr., 45, with one count of conspiring to commit money laundering, alleging that he facilitated the transnational gold-smuggling operation.
According to the criminal complaint affidavit unsealed last week, Rodriguez owned and operated Transvalue, a South Florida company that transported gold, cash, and other valuables by armoured truck.
The affidavit alleges that from about March 2015 to September 2016, Rodriguez helped arrange for the importation into the US of thousands of kilograms of illicitly-sourced gold from Curacao.
A press release from the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida outlined details of the affidavit, which states that the sellers of the gold were co-conspirators based in the Caribbean, while the buyers were co-conspirators based in South Florida and Latin America, who earned volume-based commissions by procuring gold for NTR Metals, now called Elemetals LLC.
NTR Metals was a US precious metals refinery with policies in place to combat money laundering, including not buying gold from Curacao, a country with no gold mines that is commonly used as a waypoint for gold illegally mined in, and smuggled out of, South America.
The affidavit alleges that Rodriguez helped co-conspirators dodge NTR Metals’ anti-money laundering policy and get the gold past US Customs by working to conceal its illegal origins and connections to Curacao, by coordinating transportation for the gold from Curacao to the US, then to the Cayman Islands, and back into the US.
According to the charge details, Rodriguez hired brokers to clear the gold through US Customs at Miami International Airport, where customs documentation was introduced falsely identifying the gold as having originated in the Cayman Islands, not Curacao. Then, Rodriguez used his company’s armoured trucks to transport the smuggled gold from the airport to NTR Metals’ precious metals refinery in Doral, it is alleged.
Rodriguez made an initial court appearance on Thursday, 24 June, before Judge Jacqueline Becerra, where he was released on a $150,000 personal security bond. He is scheduled to be arraigned on 23 July.
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