Chaos in Venezuela as Nicolas Maduro flip-flops on currency withdrawal

The 100 bolivar bill was nearly worthless already when Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro attempted to make it completely useless.

The bill fetched just 2 cents on the black market, 14 cents at the official rate. But it was the highest denomination bank note in circulation in the country, where one bill was just enough to buy a pack of five pieces of gum.

Then Maduro decreed on 11 December that the 100 bolivar bill would be pulled from circulation in 72 hours.

After millions of Venezuelans scrambled to turn in their soon-to-be-worthless cash, they were meant to be able to withdraw newly printed notes of higher denomination ranging from 500 to 20,000 bolivars.

Except the new bills never arrived.

The following day, Maduro abruptly announced a stay of execution for the the 100 bolivar bills, blaming the same international conspiracy for delaying the planeloads of cash that were bringing the new notes. He declared the old bills would be good until 2 January calling the decision a “necessary tactical change in tack”. The borders with Colombia would remain closed until then to prevent the entry into Venezuela of what the government says are huge caches of bills being hoarded.

And adding insult to injury, Venezuela’s minister for prisons, Maria Iris Varela, mocked those who’d given up on the 100 bolivar bills they hadn’t been able to deposit, and used them to light cigarettes or pasted them to lampposts in a sign of protest, before Maduro announced the delay. “Ha ha ha ha I’d like to see the faces of those who threw their 100 (bolivar) bills out the window and burned (them)!” she wrote on Twitter.