CARA­CAS–Venezuela's pres­i­dent said the sud­den de­ci­sion to scrap the coun­try's most-used cur­ren­cy bill was an eco­nom­ic tri­umph over the coun­try's en­e­mies even as the gov­ern­ment sent troops and po­lice to cities where ri­ots and loot­ing broke out over the mea­sure.

In a na­tion­al ra­dio and tele­vi­sion broad­cast, Nico­las Maduro said his abrupt ac­tion had flood­ed the coun­try's banks with cur­ren­cy de­posit­ed by Venezue­lans rac­ing to get rid of the pa­per bills while al­so dev­as­tat­ing Colom­bian-bor­der cur­ren­cy traders he blames for the bo­li­var's pre­cip­i­tous plunge in val­ue against "the crim­i­nal dol­lar."

Last week's sud­den an­nounce­ment an­nulling all 100-bo­li­var notes led to mas­sive lines at banks, a dra­mat­ic spurt in elec­tron­ic pay­ment and wide­spread fear by poor­er peo­ple with no bank ac­counts and all their sav­ings in the doomed bills, whose val­ue had al­ready plunged to a few US cents. Cash trans­ac­tions such as buy­ing food or gaso­line be­came ex­treme­ly dif­fi­cult.

Maduro sud­den­ly changed course late Sat­ur­day, an­nounc­ing the 100-bo­li­var notes could be used un­til Jan­u­ary 2.

Be­fore that an­nounce­ment ri­ots and loot­ing broke out in sev­er­al cities and Maduro said Sun­day more than 300 peo­ple had been de­tained, in­clud­ing sev­er­al mem­bers of op­po­si­tion par­ties.

He said the vi­o­lence re­sult­ed from "a macabre" plan pro­mot­ed by US Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma to ex­tract mas­sive quan­ti­ties of 100-bo­li­var notes from the coun­try and stock­pile them abroad.

He said it was meant to be "the fi­nal blow of Oba­ma, a fi­nal blow to cre­ate chaos, vi­o­lence, di­vi­sion."

Most econ­o­mists blame the coun­try's eco­nom­ic woes on price con­trols and falling prices for the coun­try's oil ex­ports, as well as heavy gov­ern­ment spend­ing and pro­duc­tion-crip­pling poli­cies that gave Venezue­lans lots of 100-bo­li­var notes but not enough to buy with them.

Maduro said he'd had to lift ex­tend the life of the old cur­ren­cy notes be­cause sabo­teurs had pre­vent­ed the ar­rival of three air­planes car­ry­ing new­ly print­ed, larg­er-de­nom­i­na­tion bills from abroad. He didn't give de­tails about the plot.

(AP)