The businesses in the Mining Arc are not all gold or precious
The businesses in the Mining Arc are not all gold or precious :-
The improvised police checkpoint could well have been one of the many that security forces usually install daily on Trunk 10, the highway that comes from the shores of the Caribbean Sea and connects the main towns of the region from north to south. mining area in the southeast of Bolívar state, until reaching the border with Brazil.
But this particular checkpoint, improvised with orange plastic cones placed on the asphalt strip on Tuesday, April 2, 2024, reserved a surprise for a commission of the National Anti-Kidnapping Command (Conas) of the Bolivarian National Guard (GNB, component of the Armed Forces) that circulated on the road. Made up of four non-commissioned officers, armed with Kalashnikov AK-103 rifles and pistols, the commission traveled to Caracas with a shipment of 37.5 kilos of gold bars consigned by “a private alliance company”. According to the price per ounce of gold to date, the cargo then had a market value of around $3.24 million.
So, according notes from the local press, in the Los Rosos sector, just after leaving Upata (capital from the Piar municipality of Bolívar state, still about 700 kilometers from Caracas) in the direction of Ciudad Guayana, a group of individuals, dressed in vests from the Scientific, Criminal and Criminal Investigation Corps (Cicpc, auxiliary body of the Public Ministry), intercepted the transport. The subjects subdued the soldiers and kept the mineral and all the weapons, except one of the assault rifles.
Due to the amount of loot and the spectacular nature of the operation, typical of a Hollywood production, the event caught the attention of national media. There were those who noticed the detail that the Conas members did not offer resistance to the assault, even though they had the arsenal and training to do so. As seen in a video, not independently confirmed, which then circulated on Instagram and in which a driver would have recorded the moment of the robbery, there was no scuffle, but rather it was an almost peaceful transfer of packages, from one vehicle to another. However, the Conas uniformed officers were found tied up in the end.
It was also notable that the risky shipment was made with a commission of agents from State security forces and not through the services of any private securities transportation company.
It all happened in the open sky and in broad daylight, just 16 days before the United States reinstate the economic sanctions against the gold sector in Venezuela, which the government of former President Joe Biden had lifted on October 18, 2023. During those six months of laxity, between one measure and another, gold smuggling networks from Brazil took advantage of the brief opening to divert to Venezuelan territory the usual export routes for their cargo, which then began to take off from the airports serving Caracas.
Six days after the robbery, the diary Latest News from Caracas, owned by economic groups close to the Chavista regime and with an official editorial line, he reported the recovery of part of the weapons, buried under the undergrowth in a place near the attack.
Four months later, on August 27, 2024, the same media reported again that the authorities had recovered one of the six stolen weapons and some 6.64 kilos of gold during a procedure in the la Raiza Sector from Santa Teresa del Tuy, Miranda state, part of the expanded suburbs of the Venezuelan capital. In the police raid, José Enrique Correa Rodríguez was reportedly under arrest The Sabine; José de Jesús Bacca, Roof; Andrés René Pacheco Fayola, Rene; Karelis del Valle Correa Rodríguez, Karen; and Osmary Gabriela Torres Tabaré. The note identified those mentioned as members of the gang of a criminal leader nicknamed The commander.
Although the results of the ongoing investigations are still unknown today, as well as the fate of both the assailants and the loot, and in the midst of vagueness, the authorities were able to clarify that the consignee company of the golden shipment was Inversiones Peca 19, CA, based in Caracas. Until then, this company operated in the Orinoco Mining Arc in alliance with the state-owned Venezuelan Mining Corporation (CVM).
The theft of the 37.5 kilos of gold seemed to mark a milestone for the company. At the same time that it seemed to change its name to Elite Gold, it resumed a winding business journey that came from before and includes mineral exports to destinations such as Panama, Switzerland and China. The present story, an installment of the series Golden Opacity II which he coordinates from Peru Call.pe, reconstructs that journey until connecting it with a network of another thirty companies linked to three Venezuelan merchants, among them and above all, Gian Piero D'Andrea Acosta, a young businessman.
In the records, three are no longer a crowd
The sole owner of Inversiones Peca 19 CA is, since November 2021, the Italian-Venezuelan Gian Piero D'Andrea Acosta who, at the age of 38 and with a business career unknown to the public, already has around twenty to his credit. of companies, not all dedicated to the mining sector, which he registered over eight years both in Venezuela and in foreign jurisdictions: Florida, Panama, Dubai, Hong Kong, Spain, and Turkey, among them.
Although it is registered in the National Registry of Contractors (RNC), Inversiones Peca 19 CA appears outdated and, therefore, disqualified from contracting with the State. In fact, the name that continues to appear in the RNC records as the owner of the company is that of Gustavo Adolfo Arteta Rocha, its initial owner and later partner of D'Andrea, and declares its headquarters at an address that it maintained until 2022 in Sabana Big, Caracas.
According to her Facebook profile (whose access is now restricted), D'Andrea Acosta studied at the Américo Vespucio School in Caracas; On his account on that social network you could recently read the regrets that his friends expressed when, in 2005, the future businessman announced his upcoming emigration from Venezuela. In an old photo he is seen wearing a shirt with aviation pilot badges.
D'Andrea Acosta shares the partnership of at least 12 of his 20 companies in Venezuela, Panama and Miami with two other Venezuelan citizens, the aforementioned Gustavo Adolfo Arteta Rocha and David Eloy López Rodríguez. The three alternate as shareholders and directors of several firms.
According to the description found on their Instagram and Facebook accounts, the Golden Capital Group, GDG CA, chaired by D'Andrea Acosta, serves as an umbrella for this budding conglomerate. He has also used the same name to identify firms in Miami and Panama. The acronym GDG would correspond to the initials of the partners' first names: Gustavo, David and Gian Piero. But other related companies in Caracas, Dubai, Hong Kong and Spain bear the acronym GPDA, which seems to allude to the initials of Gian Piero D'Andrea.
In email statements for Armando.infoD'Andrea emphasized the private nature of Grupo Golden Capital, which he describes as a firm with no connection whatsoever with the government or the State “beyond strict compliance with its legal and tax obligations like any company in the country and inherent to the legitimate business to which it is dedicated”.
Armando.info He was able to verify in their respective files, both in the RNC and in the Commercial Registry, that 16 of the 31 companies of the group of partners declare their addresses in the same office on the 8th floor of the East Tower of the Parque Cristal building in the Los Palos Grandes urbanization, in the northeast of Caracas. In mid-September, the reporter visited that location. Its current tenants said that these companies no longer operate “for quite some time” in that direction. During the tour, it was also verified that five other firms in the emporium, including Inversiones Peca 19 CA, do not operate in another premises on the 4th floor, contrary to what their commercial documents indicate.
In addition to D'Andrea, Armando.info He tried to contact his partners, López and Arteta, through interview requests sent to the email addresses of the companies involved. Neither of them answered.
Now you see me, now you don't
At the time of the robbery, Inversiones Peca 19 CA was part of a mining alliance that, like a joint venture, It was established between private actors such as companies, cooperatives or small miners, on the one hand, and entities such as the CVM, on the other. According to its commercial registration file, which was opened in 2019, its corporate purpose is the “sale, import, export, distribution, arrangement and transformation of all kinds of minerals such as metals, gold, silver and precious metals”.
The shipment of gold that was the target of the April 2024 assault left the Inversiones Peca 19 branch in Upata. Their premises were located on the ground floor of a small shopping center in the city center, where gold buying and selling businesses still abound.
Gian Piero D'Andrea Acosta apologized to Armando.info In order not to comment on that robbery incident: “The criminal proceedings are still ongoing”, he argued in an email message. “Beyond confirming that we were victims of a crime, we regret that we cannot provide more information because legally we cannot do so. We were imposed by the authorities on the legal duty to keep confidential what we know about the investigation, based on article 286 of the Organic Code of Criminal Procedure (COPP)”.
In the mallThe miner in Upata, where the Peca 19 Investment office used to be located, as in other towns in the so-called Orinoco Mining Arc, such as Tumeremo, Las Claritas and Kilometer 88, activity has decreased due to the uncertainty opened by the United States military intervention that in January of this year captured Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, in Caracas and the plans that, under the protection of its newly established tutelage, Washington announces for the mining sector of Venezuelan Guyana. Interestingly, the twin earthquakes of June 24 dealt an additional blow to the local gold trade, even if the physical destruction they produced was recorded far away, particularly on the north-central Caribbean coast. Damage to the infrastructure of Maiquetía International Airport, located in the state of La Guaira, affected the transfer of gold from the Orinoquía and Amazon rainforests to global markets This empirically supported the claims that the smuggling of precious minerals had the country's main air terminal as its exit point.
But since the date of the audacious robbery in 2024, Inversiones Peca 19 has reportedly suspended activities. At least that is what is reflected in the fact that new owners have set up shop in their Upata premises under a new name, Elite Gold, for which the Tax Identification Registry (RIF) was not found.
At the same time, Armando.info He was able to review a recent document that suggests the company would still be active and maintain some relationship with Elite Gold. In the upper margin of a gold analysis certificate, with measurements issued by a specialized machine, as recently as August 2026, the logos of Elite Gold and Inversiones Peca 19 appear together, the latter, yes, with the corresponding RIF.
“The company maintained its operations in accordance with the terms and conditions of that strategic alliance during its period of validity”, D'Andrea Acosta limited himself to clarifying about the activities that Inversiones Peca 19 CA continued to carry out in conjunction with the CVM after the robbery. Regarding the nature of his alliance with the state-owned company, he only said that, due to contractual stipulations, he could not reveal details of “a strictly confidential nature”.
Incidentally, the CVM never released any statement about a robbery that had severely harmed an ally. In any case, whether or not there was a causal relationship with the criminal event, the then president of the CVM, General Carlos Osorio, was dismissed and replaced in September 2024. Meanwhile, in June 2024, the head of the Ministry of Ecological Mining Development, Admiral William Serantes Pinto, had been replaced by Héctor Silva, who to this day remains in charge of that office, to which the CVM is attached.
Gold seems to look like
The information provided at the time by the authorities established, before the media and the public, that Inversiones Peca 19 CA was the owner of the stolen gold. But anyone who tracks the company's footprints in international trade databases, such as Importgenius and Panjiva, will not find gold exports in its name in recent years. Instead, you will come across records of other categories of noble metals.
For example, Inversiones Peca 19 CA appears in Importgenius sending about 106 kilos of air in March 2022 raw silver, valued at $55,656, to Panama, where they were received by an “unidentified buyer”. The Sayari database also records that, between January 2022 and August 2024, the firm exported four shipments of “raw silver” to Panama, something striking, since Venezuela is not regularly listed as an exporter of that metal. When asked about it for this story, Mónica Martiz, president of the Venezuelan Society of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers (Svimm), confirmed Armando.Info that Venezuela does not harbor silver deposits and therefore does not produce either raw silver or its by-products.
Pangiva and Importgenius also attest to the export of a total of 3.6 tons of silver bars, in six air shipments from Panama to Turkey, between April and December 2022, by a company with a similar name, Peca Investments SA.
D'Andrea explains that it is the same company, only with a “typing error” in the mention. It attributes its silver exports to a process in Venezuela of “silver recycling, complying with the permissology required by law”.
Importgenius also reported that Inversiones Peca 19 CA shipped nine shipments of tin to Panama and China in 2024. This was the same year that Nicolás Maduro granted mining rights to the CVM for the exploration, exploitation and export of cassiterite u tin oxide, mineral from which tin for industrial use is processed and manufactured.
D'Andrea points out again regarding “tin in our exports; we assume that they must refer to the marketing of cassiterite, which is marketed in compliance with all legal standards”.
According to Panjiva, Inversiones Peca 19 CA made four shipments of various metals to China between 2022 and 2024. Among its clients in that Asian power, they are Jiujiang Heli New Materials Co Ltd, which imported tin from Venezuela in August 2023; Jiujiang Jiqing New Materials Co Ltd, plastic and acrylic manufacturer; Hunan Merida International Trade Co Ltd, which also owns a battery factory in Extremadura, Spain; and Halo Moon Ltd. with offices in Hong Kong and the United Kingdom.
Inversiones Peca 19 CA also has at least one client in Switzerland Alecar Trading SA., Swiss company that imports a variety of metals, such as aluminum, copper, tin and other non-ferrous metals, according to its website.
All roads lead to the East
Clues left in records by David Eloy López Rodríguez place him in 2021 as owner and sole director of the company First Sunrise Capital Altın Ticaret Limited Şirketi, specialized in precious metals trading and based in Istanbul, according to indicates in the Istanbul Commercial Registry Gazette. This business is also mentioned in the directory of the Chamber of Jewelers of the great Turkish metropolis. López Rodríguez had previously incorporated, in 2019, a company with the same name but in Budapest, the capital of Hungary: First Sunrise Capital Korlatolt Felelossegu Tarsasag.
The tax address of First Sunrise Capital in Istanbul is located at Kuyumcukent AVM, (or “city of jewelers”, in Turkish), the largest integrated center for the production, trade and sale of gold, silver and jewelry in the world, in the Yenisbon neighborhood. About this venture by his partner López Rodríguez, Gian Piero D'Andrea Acosta explained to Armando.info that “it never had commercial activity and did not carry out operations with any company”. Foreign trade databases confirm this.
But D'Andrea Acosta himself also set foot on his own in Turkey in 2023. That year he registered a construction materials distribution company in Ankara, the Turkish capital YÇM Real Estate Construction Investment Industry And Trade Joint Stock Company.
Simultaneously, D'Andrea Acosta opened GPDA Group General Trading LLC FZ in Dubai, one of the main global centers of the gold trade that, however, still stands out for its lack of transparency. The company declared Business Center 1 as its headquarters Meydan Hotel, in Nad Al Sheba, in the heart of the Free Zone Meydan, an impenetrable record that, by design and like other special areas from the rich emirate, it facilitates the concealment of the shareholding composition and the final beneficiaries of the companies.
In Hong Kong is the company registration GPDA Group General Trading Limited (HK), with a subsequent incorporation date: November 5, 2025. There D'Andrea appears as the sole shareholder of this firm which, although registered in that autonomous region of China, is domiciled in Dubai.
Although D'Andrea assured Armando.Info that, from Dubai, GPDA Group General Trading LLC FZ “neither markets nor has it marketed gold, silver or cassiterite”, foreign trade database reports prove something different. According to Panjiva and Sayari, the company was the consignee of four shipments of jewelry items Istor Jewelry Industry and Trade Jsc, imported in 2024 from Türkiye. Istor is a renowned gold factory, jewelry store and exporter in Istanbul, and one of the largest in Türkiye.
In a separate line from precious metals, the foreign trade database Tendata it reports that this GPDA Group General Trading of Dubai received shipments of aluminum from Venezuela in 2024, sent by the state-owned Venalum, part of the vertically integrated complex for the production of primary aluminum that the Venezuelan Corporation of Guayana (CVG) controls, which includes also to the companies Bauxilum and Carbonorca. This data suggests that D'Andrea Acosta was able to have special access to decision-makers in the marketing of Venezuelan aluminum, a very scarce commodity, since Venalum barely operates today 20% of its installed capacity and it had to stop making significant exports after the national electricity blackout in March 2019.
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