CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) – Venezuela’s president has threatened to take over idle factories and jail their owners following a decree of emergency powers this week.
Nicolas Maduro is ordering “all actions to recover the production apparatus, which is being paralyzed by the bourgeoisie.”
He also warns that businesspeople who halt production risk being “put in handcuffs.”
Last month the country’s largest food and beverage distributor, Empresas Polar, shut down its last operating beer plant. It says it has been unable to access hard currency to buy raw materials.
Maduro accuses Polar and others of trying to destabilize the economically stricken country by exacerbating shortages of goods from foodstuffs to medicines to toilet paper.