Price controls
InSight Crime states that state funds "have been pillaged on an industrial scale by the Bolivarian elite" and that "kleptocracy has certainly been one of the main factors that has brought Venezuela to the edge of economic collapse and bankruptcy". Price controls introduced by President Chávez in 2003 helped establish kleptocratic practices that still occur in Venezuela today, allowing officials to buy dollars for cheap and then exchange them bolívares at a higher black market rate so they could exchange for more dollars.