The logo of the social media account “Monitor Dolar Venezuela,” which had over 1.3 million followers on Instagram alone.
Guacamaya, May 31, 2025. On May 28, Attorney General Tarek William Saab announced that police had arrested Carlos Andrés Pérez Abreu, who managed the Instagram account “Monitor Dolar Venezuela,” which reports the exchange rate of the dollar on the black market.
Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello also stated that 20 people had been detained in connection with platforms that display the rates of the so-called “parallel dollar.”
The attorney general claimed that Pérez Abreu would be charged with the crimes of “terrorism, money laundering, unlawful solicitation, deceptive advertising, and conspiracy” due to his social media posts about the black-market exchange rate.
Following the announcement, several platforms and social media accounts have stopped reporting the “parallel dollar” exchange rate. The popular app “Al Cambio,” for example, which has over 5 million downloads on Google Play, ceased displaying the parallel rate, showing it instead at a fixed rate of 0.01 bolívars per dollar.
The operation comes at a time when the exchange gap between the official dollar rate and the black-market rate is widening. In the past week, the gap reportedly approached 50%, with the Central Bank of Venezuela (BCV) rate at 95 bolívars per dollar and the parallel rate near 130.
Exchange platforms like Binance and Kontigo continue to offer dollars at the parallel rate, hovering around 130 bolívars. However, these platforms facilitate indirect transactions, converting local currency into cryptocurrencies like USDT or USDC. Binance acts as an intermediary in a peer-to-peer (P2P) market, where users set their own buying and selling prices. Others, like Kontigo or Crixto, are financial companies that set the rates themselves.
Both exchange and reference platforms have played a crucial role in Venezuela’s highly dollarized economy, particularly in everyday transactions. The shutdown of social media accounts may complicate short-term payments, but informal currency markets continue to operate across the country.
The government of Nicolás Maduro has tried various methods to curb the widening exchange gap. With insufficient foreign currency injections through BCV interventions, security forces appear to be attempting to intimidate those who report on the black-market dollar rate.
