Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza has blasted the ruling by a US judge authorising the expropriation of assets belonging to the parent company of US-based Venezuelan petrochemicals retailer Citgo, calling it a “fraudulent” and “arbitrary” act.
“Venezuela vigorously rejects the infamous decision of Delaware court regarding our US PDVSA subsidiary, Citgo. The arbitrary decision is nothing more than a fresh act of aggression by the dying government of Donald Trump against the noble Venezuelan people,” Arreaza tweeted, accompanying the tweet with a more detailed communique.
#COMUNICADO | Venezuela rechaza enérgicamente la infame decisión de un juzgado de Delaware con respecto a nuestra filial de Pdvsa en EEUU, #Citgo. La arbitraria decisión no es más que una nueva agresión del agonizante gobierno de Donald Trump contra el noble pueblo venezolano. pic.twitter.com/zr0GoFOKxc
— Jorge Arreaza M (@jaarreaza) January 16, 2021
Separately, in an appearance on Venezuelan TV, Arreaza suggested that Juan Guaido and the Venezuelan opposition, who gained de facto control of Citgo last year after Washington slapped sanctions on PDVSA, have used their control of the company to “facilitate” the theft of Venezuelan assets by “foreign powers.”
The communique issued by the foreign ministry stresses that Caracas “denounces and categorically rejects” Washington’s actions, as well as its “collusion” with “Venezuelan extremists” and “puppets” to commit “transnational crimes in order to appropriate the assets of Venezuela and its entities throughout the world.”
“The sole purpose of these actions was to provide legal cover to the criminal handover of assets belonging to Venezuela to the government of Donald Trump, a group of business connected to him and to the Venezuelan extremists who lent themselves to undertake one of the most serious attacks ever undertaken against the Republic,” the statement alleges.
Caracas also warned the international community about the dangers of doing business with and making investments in the United States, given the example of the illegal unilateral actions undertaken against the Venezuelan company by the US court.
“Each day that Crystallex does not recover on its judgement is arguably something of an affront to the United States judicial system. Those days must soon come to an end,” Stark said in his judgement. Crystallex asked Stark to rule on the $1.4 billion arbitral award last year, following a decade-long dispute over Caracas' 2008 nationalisation of a gold mine belonging to the company. Seeking to avoid losing the assets, Venezuela's opposition tried to have the ruling thrown out or delayed.
