Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on Monday ordered the border with Colombia sealed for 72 hours, accusing "mafias" of conspiring to destabilize his country's economy by hoarding bank notes.

"I have taken the decision to close the border with Colombia for 72 hours," the leftist leader said in a nationally televised address, a day after signing an emergency decree to take the largest bank note out of circulation because of what he called a US-backed plot against Venezuela's troubled economy.