CARACAS, Venezuela — It was a haul that might have even given Santa Claus pause: 3.8 million toys, seized by Venezuela’s government on the grounds that their owners were hoarding castles and kiddie cars ahead of Christmas.
Now the government will be the one giving the toys away this year.
“This is a criminal act because it’s a violation of the rights of children,” said William Contreras, the head of the country’s consumer protection commission, on the president’s television show this week. He added that the government would correct the misdeed by handing the toys to pro-government committees “so girls and boys in Venezuela have their toys guaranteed.”
Mr. Contreras charged that Kreisel, an established Venezuelan toy distributor, planned to raise the prices by 24,000 percent — part of a scheme in which the government said the company was underreporting inventory to sell its merchandise at higher prices. Two Kreisel executives have been arrested, the authorities said.
It was the latest example of President Nicolás Maduro’s government fighting what it calls an “economic war” that it claims is being waged by business owners.
While many economists argue that the country’s economic miseries, including triple-digit inflation and chronic scarcities of the most basic goods, stem from economic mismanagement and low oil prices, the government and its left-leaning economic planners point to business people who they say unfairly raise prices and hoard basic goods in an attempt to destabilize the country.
The raid on the Kreisel warehouses occurred over the weekend, after the government ordered sellers of toys to reduce their prices by 30 to 50 percent. On Saturday, the consumer protection agency made public a photograph of Mr. Contreras in a Kreisel warehouse filled with boxes and flanked by armed soldiers.
Mr. Contreras pointed to an item called “Moon Dough Kit: Pizzeria/Ice Cream Maker,” which his agency said Kreisel had planned to sell for 25 times what it paid for the toy.
“Our boys and girls are sacred, we will not let them be robbed of Christmas,” the consumer protection agency said on Twitter.
Others took the side of the toymaker, saying it had been the victim of government grandstanding.
“The looting of Kreisel is the start of an government electoral campaign to try to rise in the polls,” Vicente Díaz, the former head of the country’s electoral commission, wrote on Twitter.
A spokesman for Kreisel could not be reached for comment. According to its website, the company has distributed toys for more than 30 years.
The government’s actions are unlikely to change the ability of Venezuelans to buy much before Christmas. The bolivar is in free fall, having lost half of its value against the dollar in November alone.
For most families, it is the search for food that has become the biggest challenge, given scarcities of everything from cornmeal to coffee.
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