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© Tamara Beckwith / NY Post
Last Friday afternoon, while President Trump was busy signing executive orders and powwowing with his cabinet on Iran, gold was spotted outside the Oval Office.

Specifically, a couple of dudes in dark suits were seen in the hallways of the White House wheeling what looked like a cart loaded up with gold bars, well-placed sources briefed on the situation told On The Money.

Mind you, these were not the puny, 1-oz trinkets you buy from Costco. These were those massive, Fort Knox-style gold bars — like a foot long each. The kind you've seen in a James Bond flick. The kind that, if you were planning to lift one, you'd need to grab it with both hands and get your back into it.

Queried on the spectacle, sources said the dark-suited "G-Men" replied that they were there to show the president part of a stash that was seized from former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro following his January arrest on various narco-terrorism charges, including tens of millions of dollars' worth of gold he had locked away in a safe.

Could the tantalizing tale be genuine? After making some calls, On The Money has learned that the gold did indeed come from Venezuela, and the bullion was indeed supposed to be shown to the president, but that the part about the Maduro secret stash was crafted from pyrite.

The real story, my sources say, is that Interior Secretary Doug Burgum had just finalized a series of licensing deals, including one with Minerven, a Venezuelan state-owned gold mining company. Minerven has agreed to sell physical gold to the Trafigura Group (known as Trafi), which trades gold on US markets as part of the White House effort to re-integrate Venezuela back into the global economy.

The big bars were getting carted around 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. as a sort of trophy to commemorate this broadening economic alliance between two countries that were once sworn enemies but now - thanks to President Trump's removal and imprisonment of Maduro - are on the road to economic cooperation.

Trump officials, coy about confirming whether the gold bars were shown to the president, stopped short of denying that the White House played host to the gold on Friday.

"This historic gold deal between Trafi and Venezuela had been in the works at President Trump's direction," the White House told On The Money in a statement. "Secretary Burgum's trip to Venezuela with the President's National Energy Dominance Council sealed the deal. We are helping Venezuela restore their mining sector, which will help American industry get the minerals we need."

Burgum himself shed some additional light on the gold-bar mystery during a Fox News interview, where he explained that "On Friday, there was $100 million of gold that came from Venezuela to the United States. Venezuela's got $500 billion of resources of gold," Burgum said. "The enthusiasm is high in Venezuela as to what their future can be."

Still, aside from its ruthless communist dictatorship, isn't Venezuela best known for its oil reserves as opposed to precious metals? Yes - Venezuela is oil rich, but it's also mineral rich. That's why this central American nation was an economic powerhouse for decades and until relatively recently, when it was transformed into a basket case under Maduro and his predecessor, Hugo Chavez.

Both men chased out foreign investment, including US mining and oil companies. With that its economy collapsed, and economic deprivation followed.


Comment: This is the main reason why Maduro was overthrown. The US wanted access to Venezuela's resource-rich land and Maduro wasn't giving them access. He could have been a brutal dictator and if he played nice with US business interests he would have been allowed to stay in power.


By locking up Maduro, the Trump administration is looking to advance American business interests with a new and friendlier government run by Delcy Rodriguez, and yes - reverse the poverty that Maduro & Co. unleashed on the Venezuelan people.

Last week, Burgum met with top Venezuelan energy and mining executives, including the deal between Minerven and Trafi that appears to be the source of those gold bars at the White House.