Miller Holding operates Lamar facilities as Venezuela’s shrimp output fell more than 90% since 2024
Venezuelan investigative police detained José Enrique Rincón at La Chinita International Airport near Maracaibo in June, shortly after the 62-year-old shrimp magnate arrived from exile in Panama. He had returned to reclaim Grupo Lamar, the $700 million conglomerate he built over four decades. His family said authorities fabricated treason and terrorism charges to justify the government’s late-2024 takeover.
The detention has placed Grupo Lamar at the center of a conflict over Venezuela’s economic transition. Nearly 11 months after Maduro’s ouster, The Wall Street Journal’s analysis said Rincón’s ordeal exposed a contradiction in Trump’s plans to turn Venezuela into an investment hub. The analysis said politically motivated jailings and seizures of private businesses—practices described as well-worn during nearly 28 years of leftist rule—continued under Delcy Rodríguez and the U.S. government apparatus controlling much of the interim leadership. The U.S.-backed government in Caracas is allowing outside investors, including Miller Holding, to manage pieces of Grupo Lamar and is courting new capital for the shrimp industry Rincón once dominated.
The Turkish company Miller Holding now operates Lamar’s shrimp facilities. A spokeswoman for Turhan Mildon, the company’s chief executive, said in the past that Miller Holding operates the facilities but does not own them. Venezuela’s Information Ministry and Miller Holding did not respond to requests for comment about Rincón’s detention.
Mildon, 29, married Trump’s former personal attorney and ally Alina Habba in New York last month at a ceremony attended by Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Kash Patel and Attorney General Todd Blanche. Miller Holding also operates a network of Venezuelan cement factories and markets coffee beans under concessions granted under Maduro. In a recent interview with Forbes Turkey, Mildon lamented Maduro’s ouster but expressed little concern for his businesses. “In my grandfather’s time, know-how was very important,” Mildon told the magazine. “Now, know-who is important.”
A U.S. official said the Trump administration opposed Maduro-era expropriations and corruption and had urged Venezuelan authorities to cancel Mildon’s cement contract if it violated sanctions or resulted from corruption. The official said reversing decades of corruption would take time but that the administration was working to address it.
Rincón began selling blue crab found in Lake Maracaibo in 1988, then expanded into shrimp farming, supermarkets and processing recyclable materials. By 2022, Lamar’s annual shrimp exports to Europe had reached about $200 million, making the company a rare private-sector success in a country dependent almost entirely on oil. Lamar became Zulia state’s primary employer, paying cash production bonuses and offering subsidized food and medical care in a region with few formal job opportunities outside border smuggling.
The bulk of Lamar’s workforce was Indigenous Wayuu, thousands of whom were hired to peel and package shrimp at processing plants around Maracaibo. The Wayuu language was so common on the job that Rincón learned phrases for speaking with employees. The seizure of Lamar hit Zulia’s Wayuu population hardest. Jonathan González, 30, a Wayuu Indigenous man and former Lamar processor, said he had to halt construction on his home after losing his job. “I don’t know who keeps saying that things in Venezuela are getting better,” González said. “For a lot of us, things are much worse now than they were before.”
After the U.S. said Maduro rigged his 2024 re-election and jailed hundreds of political adversaries, the family’s fortunes changed. In November 2024, Diosdado Cabello, then Maduro’s top security official, publicly accused Rincón of funding the political opposition and plotting against the government. No evidence was presented. Within days, Rincón’s relatives and executives fled to Colombia, Panama and the U.S. Security forces seized Lamar offices, processing plants, apartments and thousands of acres of farmland without court orders.
Under a state-appointed board, Lamar faltered. Former managers said the company suffered from a lack of capital. Unpaid workers left in droves, and a major processing facility was later destroyed in a fire. Industry figures put the decline in Venezuela’s total shrimp output at more than 90% since 2024, driven largely by Lamar’s deterioration under state management. The downturn left roughly 9,000 workers jobless in western Venezuela, while more than 100 of Rincón’s relatives and business associates fled the country.
Almost six months after the U.S. military operation on Jan. 3 captured Nicolás Maduro on drug-trafficking charges, which Maduro denies, Rincón believed the political landscape had shifted enough for him to return and reclaim his property. He had seen Venezuela align with the Trump administration after the U.S. overthrow of Maduro and thought he could safely return home. “He thought this was the moment,” his son, Juan Diego Rincón, said in a phone interview from Panama. Rincón’s aging father and younger sister were waiting for him at La Chinita International Airport when Venezuelan investigative police detained him upon landing.
In a submission to the antiterrorism court handling his case, Rincón said he returned to reclaim his business and face charges “because it’s the only way to demonstrate my innocence and salvage the honor of my family.”
Rincón remains in a 9-by-6-foot cell at Rodeo I prison near Caracas. His family said he had lost 25 pounds and suffered from unaddressed cardiac issues. His lawyer said in a court filing last month that Venezuelan prosecutors had not provided documents outlining the charges or evidence against him. Rincón also complained of deteriorating health, cardiac problems and insufficient access to the medications he needed after a gastric bypass. Maracaibo-based Lamar was the country’s dominant exporter of farmed shrimp. Lamar is one of numerous assets—ranging from farmland to metal-processing plants—that were seized by Maduro’s government and remain in state hands under Rodríguez.
His sister, Mariana Rincón, is one of the few relatives remaining in Venezuela and the only one allowed to visit him. “This has been one long horror film,” she said. She delivers food, medication and industry trade magazines to his cell every week while seeking his release. Mariana Rincón also tried to register her brother with local human-rights groups that track political detentions in Venezuela. Overwhelmed by a surge this year in families reporting arbitrary arrests of their loved ones, the organizations placed him on a waiting list.
Venezuelan authorities continued to court investors for the shrimp industry he had dominated while Rincón remained jailed. Last month, the Fishing Ministry announced plans to host business delegations from Indonesia to seek new investment. Family members and business aides said ski-masked officers of the Special Operations Group, a security force that located Rincón’s properties, drive the businessman’s vehicles and use his house in Maracaibo as an improvised command center.
Allies of Rincón said Delcy Rodríguez’s continuation of Maduro-era seizures threatened Washington’s economic recovery strategy for Venezuela. “They destroyed everything,” Juan Diego Rincón said. “The persecution is ongoing, they’re ruining businesses and it’s even stoking migration.”