Police said that two people were under arrest for allegedly trying to destabilizeVenezuela's banking sector by putting out rumors on Twitter.
The suspects, a man and a woman, could face up to 11 years in jail under the terms of a 2001 law punishing the dissemination of false information or the use of any other fraudulent means to disrupt normal banking practices.
The couple in custody "were using the social networking site Twitter to disseminate false rumors with the purpose of destabilizing the national banking system... and trigger a run on banks," said scientific and technical police chiefWilmer Flores, on Thursday.
Police seized from the suspects a cellular phone that included "the first message" sent on Twitter, as well as two external hard drives and other portable memory devices. However, police did not divulge the exact content of the tweets.
Venezuelan banks have been on tenterhooks since leftist President Hugo Chavez's administration began intervening in the sector, with more than a dozen small- and mid-sized banks having been either expropriated or shut down since November 2009.
The latest government takeover earlier this month involved Banco Federal, the country's eighth largest bank. Chavez blamed the bank directors, who so far have eluded arrest, of "leading a bank irresponsibly into a position of bankruptcy."
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