LatinNews Daily - 18 June 2024

*Venezuela’s Vice President Delcy Rodríguez has issued a statement denouncing a planned forced auction of shares in Citgo, the US subsidiary of Venezuela’s state oil company Petróleos de Venezuela (Pdvsa). A district court in the US state of Delaware had set a deadline of 11 June for submitting bids in the auction, which was ordered by Delaware district judge Leonard Stark in order to pay creditors for past expropriations and debt defaults by the Venezuelan governments of President Nicolás Maduro and his late predecessor, Hugo Chávez (1999-2013). According to a Reuters report published yesterday, bids have been submitted by the US investment banks Morgan Stanley and JP Morgan, and by US investment firms Rothschild & Co and Elliott Investment Management. Rodríguez said in her statement that the “theft” of Citgo “constitutes a new episode in the multifaceted aggression of US institutions against Venezuela, which is aimed at depriving the Venezuelan people of assets that belong to them, in open violation of the norms that govern the peaceful co-existence of nations”. The auction, which is likely to be completed before Venezuela’s 28 July presidential election, has the potential to harm the opposition given that since 2019 Citgo has been governed by an executive board appointed by former opposition leader Juan Guaidó.