PSUV Deputy Jorge RodrĂguez, president of the Venezuelan National Assembly. Photo: Venezuelan National Assembly.
The Venezuelan far-right opposition, under the guidance of Juan GuaidĂł, Leopoldo LĂłpez, and Julio Borges, all belonging to the Unitary Platform (PUD) political party, has demonstrated to Washington the route by which they could steal CITGO from Venezuela.
During a debate in the plenary session of the Venezuelan Parliament about the theft of CITGO by the US this Tuesday, June 18, the president of the Venezuelan National Assembly (AN), Jorge RodrĂguez, noted how the “attorney” appointed by the fake “interim government” of GuaidĂł had recommended that the Crystallex company should use CITGO to act against Venezuela.
“They are so shameless that GuaidĂł asks Crystallex’s advisor to participate in the Crystallex trial, as part of his spurious government,” he said. “He appointed a Crystallex employee to ‘defend’ CITGO,” adding that GuaidĂł worked to ensure that the members of the so-called “interim government” diverted the dividends that CITGO provided to “live like kings abroad.”
“Guaidó put someone in the position of a fox in a henhouse, a Crystallex employee defend CITGO,” he said, referring to José Ignacio Hernández, who was appointed by Guaidó to defend CITGO in a lawsuit initiated by the Canadian mining corporation Crystallex, where Hernández previously worked as an attorney.
“We used the money that came from that refinery mainly to provide healthcare to our children,” RodrĂguez said. “Imagine for a moment, if they did that with the fake government they set up, what tragedy would occur in Venezuela if those thieves, barbarians, came to take power in the country. If they put up one of those morons, we run the risk of being left without a country,” he continued, adding that “they built hoax upon hoax to take over Venezuela’s main asset abroad, the CITGO refinery system, which was also a highly desired loot by those who hold the real power in the US.”
Venezuela not allowed to defend its assets
RodrĂguez further highlighted that CITGO was stolen from our country because Venezuela was not allowed to go to court to defend its legitimate right over this set of refineries.
He pointed out that at the request of the far-right, the US court handling the CITGO case began the auction by secretly receiving the offers in their Delaware court, which amounted to nothing other than breaking up CITGO and handing it over to US oligarchic interests.
“They asked the gringos to wait until after the elections to sell CITGO, but the court has already accepted the offers. The company is being delivered at a ridiculous price, because the assets of that company amount to $21 billion,” he highlighted, adding, “Let Gerardo Blyde deny me if I am lying,” referring to the head of the Unitary Platform in its negotiations with the Venezuelan government.
“You have to be a barbarian and someone who doesn’t consider their nation their home,” he said. “Those who are the cause of this, like Horacio Medina, the one who stopped the oil industry during the government of Commander Chávez [in 2002], that is currently the president of CITGO appointed by them, who earns more than $4 million in annual fees and the dividends that are distributed among them,” recalling that GuaidĂł approved a bond payment of $71 million for CITGO’s creditors.
The president of the Venezuelan parliament then read a message posted on social media platforms by former Colombian President Ernesto Samper, “whom we thank for his courage,” he added.
“With this process against the Venezuelan state-owned oil company CITGO, the United States is inaugurating a dangerous form of international expropriation that seeks to invalidate its property titles in the US worth US$21 billion, to hand them over, without Venezuela being able to exercise its right of self-defense, to the company’s national creditors,” reads Samper’s message. “This financial blow helps little or nothing to the electoral process that is currently taking place in the neighboring country. Attempting to force elections to be held under the US’s terms amid sanctions is a subtle but effective way to intervene in the right of voters to vote freely without having a shotgun like this in the back of the head.”
He highlighted that “part of the hoax” of Guaidó and José Ignacio Hernández as “special attorney” of his government and advisor to Crystallex was to use the US legal device known as the “alter ego” to go against CITGO to respond to some debts by the Republic of Venezuela pending to the Canadian mining company, Crystallex.
Samper further emphasized that the opposition already offered the US and its allies the Essequibo territory if they helped them take power. “They already offered it to ExxonMobil, who wants to steal our oil and take it for nothing,” he said, adding that “after the revolutionary victory on July 28, the Venezuelan people will tell the gringos ‘if you want our oil, you pay for it’ at what it costs.”
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/JRE/AU
