The Venezuelan government on Tuesday described the sale of shares of PDV Holding, the parent company of the Venezuelan state oil company Citgo, which was approved three days ago by a local judge in the United States, as a “vulgar and barbaric plunder,” in a mechanism it described as “fraudulent” and stressed that it “does not recognize and will not recognize.”
“Caracas strongly rejects the decision adopted in the judicial proceeding of the ‘forced sale’ of Citgo, which was carried out by the US authorities to the detriment of Venezuela’s interests and entities, and which constitutes a vulgar and barbaric expropriation of Venezuelan assets in US territory through a fraudulent process,” said the statement issued by Venezuela’s Vice President, Delcy Rodriguez, on her Telegram channel.
In this way, the executive branch headed by Nicolás Maduro denounced that Washington intended to “corrupt” the company through an operation in which Caracas and the state company Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) were excluded, an action that the South American country contextualized as “a new episode of multifaceted aggression carried out by the United States against Venezuela in collusion with María Corina Machado, Edmundo González, Juan Guaido” and others. Figures from the Venezuelan opposition.
“Venezuela reiterates that it does not and will not recognize the forced sale of Citgo” and “reaffirms that it will continue to adopt all measures at its disposal to ensure that the promoters and implementers of the Citgo expropriation process are met with justice,” the statement read.
Citgo is the seventh-largest oil company in the United States by refining volume and is PDVSA’s major foreign asset. Since 2019, it has been under the control of the Venezuelan opposition, which claimed to be the legitimate representative of the Venezuelan state, and its shares will now pass into the hands of Amber Energy, a subsidiary of the investment fund Elliott Investment Management.
As many as 15 creditors have been filing lawsuits for eight years seeking nearly $19 billion in U.S. courts in compensation for asset seizures and debt defaults in Venezuela. Citgo generated between $700 and $1.2 billion annually and was the main source of liquid currency for the Venezuelan government.