As the power of Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido has dwindled, he’s kept something in his back pocket: Citgo Petroleum Corporation, the American refiner and gas distributor with the potential to bring in hundreds of millions of dollars to help topple President Nicolas Maduro, Bloomberg News reported. Now Guaido is on the verge of losing the company. Creditors owed $7 billion in debts accrued by Maduro and his predecessor, Hugo Chavez, are mounting legal challenges to wrest control of it -- and appear to be succeeding.
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Venezuela
Venezuela says it will make a million-to-1 change in its currency soon, eliminating six zeros from prices in the local currency as hyperinflation continues to plague the troubled South American nation, the Associated Press reported. Venezuela’s central bank on Thursday announced the change to the bolivar will go into effect Oct. 1. The new 100 bolivar bill will be the highest denomination. It is equivalent to 100,000,000 of the current bolivar. This is the third adjustment since socialist leaders began governing Venezuela.
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President Joe Biden’s administration rejected Nicolas Maduro’s call for relief from U.S. sanctions, saying the Venezuelan leader needs to do more toward restoring democracy before penalties would be lifted, Bloomberg News reported. Maduro, a target of crippling U.S. sanctions under former President Donald Trump, reached out to Biden in an exclusive Bloomberg interview last week, calling on him to lift sanctions, normalize relations and end the “demonization of Venezuela.” Responding to Maduro’s comments, a State Department spokesman said a U.S.
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A unit of Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA on the Dutch Caribbean island of Bonaire has declared bankruptcy, citing the impact of U.S. sanctions on Venezuela, a court filing showed, Reuters reported. In a March 9 filing published last week by the Court of First Instance of Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba, PDVSA-owned Bonaire Petroleum Corporation (BOPEC) said it could no longer pay its debts because sanctions had cut off its “access to international trade,” as well as cash held in bank accounts.
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Millions of barrels of Venezuelan heavy crude, embargoed by the U.S., have been surreptitiously going to China, Bloomberg News reported. The cat-and-mouse games that avoid detection and sanctions include ship-to-ship transfers, shell companies and silenced satellite signals. But there’s another aspect to the dodge. It involves “doping” the oil with chemical additives and changing its name in the paperwork so it can be sold as a wholly different crude without a trace of its Venezuelan roots.
A federal judge ordered that Venezuela’s stake in oil refiner Citgo Petroleum Corp. be put up for sale to satisfy creditors, calling the country’s nonpayment an affront while acknowledging that no auction can occur under current U.S. sanctions, the Wall Street Journal reported. Judge Leonard Stark of the U.S. District Court in Wilmington, Del., said that Venezuela’s shares in Citgo’s parent company should be positioned for sale “to the extent possible.” No such sale can occur under rules promulgated by the Trump administration that restrict transfers of Venezuelan state property.
The European Union can no longer legally recognise Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido as the country's legitimate head of state after he lost his position as head of parliament, the bloc's 27 governments said on Wednesday, Reuters reported. Guaido is still seen by the United States and Britain as Venezuela's rightful leader following the disputed 2018 re-election of President Nicolas Maduro, and two EU diplomats stressed the EU still did not recognise Maduro as president.
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro installed a new National Assembly filled with regime loyalists, consolidating his power over key institutions in the crisis-torn nation despite mounting U.S. sanctions, Bloomberg News reported. Lawmakers on Tuesday elected former Information Minister Jorge Rodriguez as the new president of the legislative body.
The government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is approaching some of the nation’s creditors in a bid to lay the groundwork for a debt deal should sanctions ease after next month’s U.S. election, Bloomberg News reported. His team has convened phone calls with local bondholders in the past few weeks, as well as those from Colombia, Argentina and Europe, according to people familiar with the matter. Prominent investors such as Boston-based Fidelity Investments; Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and BlackRock Inc.