Hello, Golds family. Alen Hibbert here with another video and today I want to talk about Venezuela and the recent arrest of President Maduro. A lot of people are excited that this is going to have a big impact on the prices of gold and silver, particularly silver, but I want to push back on that a little bit and separate fact from fiction. So, let's dive in. So over the weekend, I saw some tweets that are basically celebrating how good this news is going to be for the price of silver. And this is one of them.


Venezuela invaded for silver, not drugs. Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro was recently arrested by the United States. The news claims it's for national security and stopping drugs. That is the cover story. The reality Venezuela sits on the Arco Monero, a geological region containing an estimated $1 trillion dollar in unmined natural resources. Buried in the mountains is silver, silver listed first, gold, and other precious metals required to run the US military and the green energy grid. By


seizing the region, the US secures their supply chain for the next 50 years. They invaded specifically to refill their vaults. The world is running out of physical metal. Venezuela has it. This is not a drug bust. It is a strategic silver and precious metals acquisition with a big pile of silver here. So silver is really emphasized and I saw several tweets like this basically putting silver at the forefront and making it seem very important. Now I agree that the world is kind of running out of silver. That's been the case for


five or seven years depending how you count it. And I agree that 2026 is going to be a fantastic year for silver. I'm kind of expecting the price to outperform what it did in 2025, which was very impressive. Uh, but I don't think the Venezuela situation is going to be as impactful for silver as tweets like this make it seem. And just as a quick example, there's another one again with a pile of silver. They are lying to you about Venezuela. Today's mission was an asset acquisition, not a war on


drugs. Silver, silver, silver. Okay. Now, I don't know if these are written by bots or written by AI or just somebody with an agenda. Now, I think that the situation in Venezuela is very important for gold and silver holders, but it's for reasons we've been saying on this channel for several years. It's not necessarily something new, and it's not unique to silver. It's actually much more important for gold. I'm going to explain what that is. So, let's get everyone up to speed in case you missed


the news. Over the weekend, the US basically invaded quote unquote uh Venezuela and seized President Nicholas Maduro, and they have him in custody and he's being indicted in New York. So, President Trump said on Saturday that the US is going to run Venezuela until a proper transition can take place following a stunning attack on Caracus to capture President Nicholas Maduro. He added that the US is not afraid of boots on the ground. So, that's part of his plan for transition. And another media


outlet Wired here posed the question, what happens next in Vene Venezuela and the rest of Latin America? Donald Trump says that Venezuela's governance will remain in the hands of senior US officials until a proper and judicious transition can take place. The rest of the region is on notice. And as you might expect, the mainstream media here is focused on oil. They're making this a story about oil and a little bit drugs. Um, and then we have some bots and some other people with an agenda that are


making it about silver. So we have oil, drugs, silver, and I think the main takeaway is actually oil and gold. This is really about regime certainty. In the case of the United States, they're trying to be the policemen of the world. And if gold and oil leaks outside their control, they can't control the world. So this is really the centerpiece that I want to focus on. Hey guys, for those of you who have questions about gold or silver or your portfolio in general, I'm going to be hosting a live event on Zoom called Ask


Allen. The details are right here on screen, and if you want to sign up, go to goldsilver.com/askalen. So, from the Wired article here, at Saturday's press conference, Trump indicated that his administration has plans to rebuild the Venezuelan oil infrastructure and recover the oil that, according to the president, was stolen from the United States several decades ago. Venezuela unilaterally seized and sold American oil, American assets, and American platforms, costing us billions and billions of dollars. Trump claimed,


"We are going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, and start making money for the country." Okay, so mainstream media says it's about oil. And by the way, they're not wrong. Venezuela has the world's largest crude oil reserves estimated at over 300 billion barrels yet to be extracted. Okay, so Venezuela is number one in oil. So there's no question oil is relevant here,


definitely. But it's not just about oil. So let's look at a history of some of the sanctions that the US has imposed on Venezuela over the last two decades and see what specifically the US is trying to control. We see here from the Congressional Research Service, Venezuela overview of US sanctions policy. And this was updated a month ago. So since 2005, so 20 years, the United States has imposed targeted sanctions on Venezuelan individuals and entities that have engaged in criminal, anti-democratic or corrupt actions.


Okay, so this PDF has a nice summary of the different sanctions and what specifically the US is trying to control. We see sections on export controls, drug trafficking related sanctions, uh visa restrictions, sanctions related to anti-democratic actions and human rights violations, terrorism, okay, and a handful of others. But what's absolutely fascinating because none of that really should be a surprise. But what I found super surprising is the broader sectoral sanctions. Entire sections of the


Venezuelan economy that are sanctioned. And why why would an entire sector be sanctioned and which ones are they? Well, in November 2018, President Trump issued Executive Order 13850. This executive order set forth a framework to block the assets of and prohibit certain transactions with any person determined by the Secretary of the Treasury to operate in designated sectors of the Venezuelan economy or to engage in corrupt transactions with the Maduro government. Okay, so which sectors are they? Well, let's go to


executive order 13850 and take a look. Okay, so executive order 13850, this was November 1st of 2018, blocking property of additional persons contributing to the situation in Venezuela. Which sectors of the economy are sanctioned? Okay. I, Donald J. Trump, um, President of the United States, hereby order as follows. All property and interest in property the in the United States uh duh are blocked and may not be transferred, paid, exported, withdrawn or otherwise dealt in any person determined by the secretary of the


treasury in consultation with the secretary of state to operate in the gold sector of the Venezuelan economy. The gold sector or any other sector that may be determined to be who engaged in deceptive practices of corruption. Okay, so the gold sector or anything else that might be corrupt. So gold is the only one explicitly named the gold sector. This is so important. So the gold sector according to the United States and according to Trump is corrupt in Venezuela and they want to put a stop to that. And if anything else is deemed


to be corrupt, they want to put a stop to that too. Okay, this is absolutely fascinating. In January 2019, the following year, pursuant to that executive order, OFAC, um this is an office of the treasury. This is the office of foreign asset control. Okay. They designated that PDVSA, this is the petroleum of Venezuela company, designated them as operating in the oil sector of the Venezuelan economy. And the secretary of the treasury determined that the company was subject to US sanctions. So now we have the gold


sector and the oil sector and they are corrupt in Venezuela according to the US. The executive order froze all property and interest in property of PDVSA subject to US jurisdictions and prohibited US persons, companies or individuals from engaging in transactions with the company. OFAC also sanctioned Venezuela's central bank, national development bank and state-owned gold company, Manurvven. Okay, so we have gold, oil, and banking. [laughter] Okay, so we put this together. What do we get? we get that


uh basically money, payment networks, and energy. Okay, keep that in mind because we're going to tie it all together at the very end. So, you might be wondering, why is the gold sector in Venezuela corrupt? What is really going on here? And to answer that question, we have this handy PDF, gold flows from Venezuela. And this was released by the OECD. And in it, their executive summary, they answer this exact question. As highlighted by the Financial Action Task Force, gold is a preferred medium for illicit finance.


So, when I first read that, I had to read it twice. Gold is a preferred medium for illicit finance. They're basically saying if you want to do crimes, you know, using gold is a pretty good choice. Wow. Fascinating. It is highly valuable, portable, and capable of holding its value even during significant market shocks in markets around the world. As an element, it is very difficult to trace through chemical analysis. It can be reshaped in myriad ways or literally blended into anonymity. Perhaps most importantly,


gold is not intrinsically illicit. So it can be laundered easily into legitimate supply chains contributing to the graying of local, national and regional economies and even the global financial system. In this context, gold flows from Venezuela present serious challenges. So basically the United States wants to pay attention to where Venezuela is moving its gold because it wants to know what activities it's financing. So this is about payment surveillance and control. also why the central bank was


sanctioned. Since the nationalization of Venezuela's mining industry in 2011, criminals of various kinds have encroached on the country's gold mining sector. Okay, so more and more criminals in the gold sector. And in case you're wondering, well, how much gold does Venezuela have and how much are they exporting? While it is extremely difficult to estimate gold production in Venezuela, processing capacity and reporting suggests that it could conceivably amount to as much as 75 tons per year as of July 2021. So


it's a few years outdated. It's probably more now. The market value of that production would exceed $4.4 billion again at old prices. So much much higher now. Multiples. Research suggests that actual current production through Venezuela amounts to a third or half that amount. So maybe 25 tons, but that's a few years old. So maybe it's as high as 50 tons now. And in in terms of dollars, it's got to be 5 to 10 billion dollars a year. So it is a meaningful amount. Let's put that in perspective in


uh the entire world here. These are the top gold producing countries in 2024. We don't yet have 2025 numbers. Um but China of course is number one, Russia number two. That's that's important in its own right. We don't see Venezuela on this list, but if it were here, it would be towards the bottom. So, it's not one of the biggest players, but it certainly is a meaningful player globally. Maybe the top 15 or top 20, but again, hard to get exact numbers. So, basically what we see is that the gold from Venezuela


allows Venezuela and the countries that it interacts with to bypass US sanctions. So, if you can't enforce a sanction, then you look powerless on the global stage. So it's very important for the US that it can enforce the sanctions that it imposes. So let's look now at the question of silver. How important is the seizure of Maduro to Venezuelan silver? Well, we see here in this article that the Arco Monero del Oranokco basically has a whole bunch of different mineral deposits here. And if you look


at the four regions here and just look for which color dot is most prevalent, is it red or blue or brown? It's definitely yellow. There's so many yellow dots over here. And what does that correspond to? Gold. So, Venezuela has a lot of gold deposits. However, you see here all these other ores, but silver isn't even listed. So, it has a whole lot of all these other things, a ton of gold, and silver isn't really listed. So, there is some silver, but it is a byproduct of some of these other


metals. Um, so silver, I don't think, is really going to be central to the Venezuela story. So what is this all about? Well, I summarized this in a tweet that I posted earlier. The events in Venezuela are about regime certainty. This is the driving force. This is the anchor point. Regime certainty requires gold, energy, and a actual ability and a perceived ability to enforce rules. And Maduro's seizure checks all three boxes. This is what's been going on in the world for decades. This is what


continues to happen. And this is what I'm keeping my eye on throughout 2026. This is really a story about regime certainty. And of course, gold is the financial asset that underpins all of that. So, this is what I'm absolutely focused on and this is what I think investors should be focused on. And if you're interested in getting gold to frontr run what all the central banks are doing, golds.com is the place to do it. I want to end today with a meme. Country has oil. America. Did someone


order some freedom? [laughter] Thank you guys for watching. I'll see you in the next video.