To most Venezuelans suffering food shortages, Lorenzo Mendoza and the company he runs, Empresas Polar SA, are trusted providers of everything from pasta to beer. But to an embattled populist government, he is a traitor responsible for the scarcities. “You parasite,” President Nicolás Maduro said recently in a televised speech in which he accused Mr. Mendoza and Polar of hoarding products as part of “an economic war” to topple his government. “Your mistake can end very badly for you, parasite, oligarch, long-haired one.” The insults, lately accompanied with threats of expropriation, are part of the mounting troubles for Venezuela’s largest privately held conglomerate and Mr. Mendoza, a wiry 50-year-old chief executive known for recalling the names of line workers and machinists in visits to far-flung plants. After 17 years of Socialist rule, Venezuela’s […]