Caracas seeks N Korea help with sanctions, coltan

Venezuela is stepping up relations with North Korea to gain sanctions-busting advice and explore metals marketing routes in Asia, according to Venezuelan government officials consulted by Argus.

President Nicolas Maduro said this week he plans to visit North Korea "very soon". The visit would form part of an Asian tour that also could include stops in Vietnam and China, according to presidential palace and foreign ministry officials.

Close Maduro ally Diosdado Cabello, who presides a rubber-stamp constituent assembly, returned to Caracas from North Korea and Vietnam last week to prepare for the presidential visit.

During Maduro's official sojourn, several agreements will be signed in strategic areas including mining, agriculture and "general trade," a palace official said. Bilateral security also figures in a tentative agenda that is being developed jointly by presidential and foreign ministry aides.

The palace official noted that both countries "have much in common including the US empire's constant aggression against our sovereign independence and national interests."

A defense ministry official in Caracas said Maduro wants to forge a security alliance between Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea.

Caracas and Pyongyang have maintained distant bilateral diplomatic relations since 1965.

A foreign ministry official said the Maduro government is seeking advice from North Korea on how to evade global US sanctions that have hamstrung the state-owned oil industry and choked off Venezuela's access to international financial markets. "North Korea has decades of experience evading international sanctions," the official said.

A US government official dismissed the significance of the warming ties between Caracas and Pyongyang. Maduro is "grasping at straws" and "posturing" in the face of international pressure to remove him, the official said.

Late Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez prioritized efforts to strengthen relations with North Korea after he first assumed power in January 1999, but the effort did not gain momentum until Maduro replaced Chavez in April 2013, according to the foreign ministry.

North Korea opened its embassy in Caracas in 2014. The Maduro government did not inaugurate Venezuela's embassy in Pyongyang until 21 August 2019 in a joint ceremony presided by Maduro's deputy foreign minister Ruben Dario Molina and North Korean deputy foreign minister Pak Myong Guk.

Coltan king

The Venezuelan delegation to Pyongyang in August was led by Maduro's son, Nicolas Maduro Guerra. Nicknamed Nicolasito, Maduro Guerra controls coltan and gold-mining projects in Bolivar state near Venezuela's border with Colombia. His partners include senior army and national guard officers in Maduro's government, two mining ministry officials tell Argus.

During Nicolasito's week-long stay in Pyongyang, he discussed mining, agricultural and financial issues with senior North Korean government officials, according to a Venezuelan official who formed part of his delegation.

Nicolasito is Venezuela's "untouchable coltan king" and is "seeking new routes to smuggle out coltan and gold from Venezuela" following a recent smuggling bust in Italy, a disgruntled official with the Sebin national intelligence service tells Argus.

During his Asian visits last week, Cabello was tasked by Maduro with proposing potential bilateral agricultural and oil ventures with Vietnamese investors, the palace official said.

Maduro is seeking Vietnamese technical advice and investment to resuscitate Venezuela's rice farming industry which has shrunk from about 1.2mn t/yr in 2014 to only about 400,000 tons in 2018, the palace official said.

The palace official said Maduro also hopes to persuade state-owned PetroVietnam to restart development of PetroMacareo, a 200,000 b/d Orinoco extra-heavy crude joint venture from which the Vietnamese company withdrew in 2013.

According to state-owned Vietnamese media, national assembly chair Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan "affirmed that Vietnam is willing to share experience in socio-economic development, especially in agricultural production, with Venezuela."