Financial coup d’Etat (pesky Colombians)

Your daily briefing for Saturday, December 03, 2016. Translated by Javier Liendo.

Search for the videos where he denounced the cyber-attack and take a look at Nelson Merentes’ expression. Don’t say I didn’t tell you.

Financial coup d’Etat -with cyber-attack

This payday Friday, ATMs had no cash for people to withdraw, the electronic platforms of some banks were having issues to complete transactions and Credicard, the company charged with handling credit and debit card operations, had technical issues with its platform. Nicolás said: “We suffered an attack today against the Credicard platform, like a coup against the country’s technological-financial system (…) Venezuela suffered a cyber-attack which caused point-of-sale failures,” basing his words on the statement issued by Manuel Fernández, head of CANTV, who claimed that the financial system had suffered a 100% cyberattack. Consequently, Nicolás ordered the Bolivarian Service of National Intelligence (SEBIN) to investigate Credicard for the delay in the restitution of the electronic system.

Neither what nor where

“We’re not exactly aware of the issue, but we’ve already determined how to fix it,” said Nicolás as he said that CANTV technicians were working to resolve the situation. To further entangle the story, last night, with the help of Industry and Trade minister Carlos Farías, Nicolás announced he would launch an exhaustive investigation to determine the causes of yesterday’s collapse. And so, Nicolás had the nerve to denounce a cyber-attack without having a clear idea of its origin and its causes; he denounced a sabotage prior to any investigation and claimed that the operation had been carried out from Cúcuta, Colombia to leave the country without paper money, lacking any sort of evidence to substantiate his claim. Yesterday, both the Credicard and the CANTV systems failed. The question that the official investigation should answer is: why?

Another meeting on TV

Besides declaring himself on full alert “in defense of the people and national economy,” Nicolás called the Banking Association and the members of the National Economy Council to a meeting this Saturday. He’ll surely dedicate a considerable of this meeting to repeating yesterday’s idiotic notions: his indignation because the Democratic Unity Roundtable agreed to condemn the Dolar Today’s attacks against the bolívar and hasn’t done it; denouncing the economic coup d’Etat carried out by national and international financial sectors, in which he involved the U.S. Treasury Department, Citibank and JPMorgan (because of the default.) Nicolás ordered Defense minister Padrino López to increase “the persecution against MUD and Cúcuta mafias,” whatever this unfortunate phrase might mean.

It’ll be on Monday that the Central Bank will offer more details regarding the new bills: “Several millions of Bs. 500 bills and several millions of Bs. 5,000 bills,” said Nicolás. As if hearing rainfall, he reports that we’ll have a bill 50 times higher than our current highest bill, nonsense! Search for the videos where he denounced the cyber-attack and take a look at Nelson Merentes’ expression. Don’t say I didn’t tell you.

Naky Soto

Naky gets called Naibet at home and at the bank. She coordinates training programs for an NGO. She collects moments and turns them into words. She has more stories than freckles.