The Venezuelan government announced on Thursday the release of 1,500 million dollars (1,366 million euros) held in Portugal in accounts of Venezuelan institutions and companies with Novo Banco.
The Bolivarian Government [da Venezuela] wins lawsuit and recovers its assets in Portugal. One thousand five hundred million dollars was unblocked from Novo Banco,” Venezuela’s Minister of Communications and Information, Freddy Ñañez, said in his account on the social network X (formerly Twitter).
The minister accompanies the message with the publication of images, in Spanish, of the decision of the Central Civil Court of Lisbon.
#Last minute The Bolivarian government wins the verdict and recovers its assets in Portugal.
One thousand five hundred million dollars was unblocked by Novo Bank
#9 Aug #14AnosDeAmorTricolor pic.twitter.com/LawABwSchHHAlfred Nazareth (@lucaalmada) August 9, 2023
According to documentation presented by Ñañez, the funds were held in accounts of several Venezuelan state-owned companies, including the Economic and Social Development Bank (BANDES) and the state-owned company Petróleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA), in addition to several branches.
The court ordered the return of funds from Banco Bandes Uruguay SA, Petrocedeño, Pdvsa Services BV, Petromonágas, Petropiar and Bariven, according to the same source.
The Venezuelan opposition has already responded to the announcement, insisting that Venezuela will not be able to access these funds due to international sanctions imposed by the US.
“The protection of BANDES money held in Novo Banco is based on (US) Treasury actions on BANDES and as long as these actions exist, Nicolás Maduro will not have access to that money,” former deputy sheriff Carlos Paparoni wrote on the social media platform. media. .
The funds Venezuela claims will be released were withheld after opposition leader Juan Guaidó publicly stated in January 2019 that he would take over the functions of Venezuela’s interim president until Nicolás Maduro was removed from power.
Guaidó was supported by more than 50 countries, including Portugal.
On February 4, 2019, the finance committee of the Venezuelan parliament, mainly from the opposition, asked Guaidó to protect Venezuela’s assets in Portugal.
“We sent (…) the information about the accounts on which the assets of the Venezuelan state are located in Portugal, to ask Novo Banco and the government [português] the protection of Venezuela’s assets in that country,” the commission subsequently announced.
A day later, Carlos Paparoni announced that Novo Banco had suspended a transfer of funds from the Venezuelan state worth USD 1,200 million (1,050 billion euros) to the Bandes bank in Paraguay.
In April 2019, President Nicolás Maduro urged the Portuguese government to unlock the assets of the Venezuelan state in Novo Banco, claiming that the money would be used to buy “the medicines and the food”.
“Free up the resources [da Venezuela] kidnapped in Europe. I ask the government of Portugal to release the $1.7 billion [cerca de 1,55 mil milhões de euros] who robbed us, who took us,” and are being held in Novo Banco, Maduro said at a ceremony with supporters.
On May 3, 2019, 19 Venezuelan human rights organizations and social movements went to the Portuguese Embassy in Caracas to ask for the release of the funds.
In a statement to Agência Lusa, Venezuela’s foreign ministry explained that “a letter has been delivered requesting the good offices of the Portuguese government to unblock 1,543 million euros that had been illegally withheld”.
According to the statement, the Portuguese diplomatic mission was “open to the request and expressed its readiness to consider it”.
On May 14, 2019, Portugal’s former foreign minister Augusto Santos Silva told the press in Brussels that Portugal is “a state of law, a political democracy and a market economy” and therefore “the banks do not obey the government”.
Santos Silva said he was aware of the “dispute between a Portuguese bank and its depositors” and that this dispute, as is “natural in a state of law”, is already under legal and judicial jurisdiction.
In February 2021, the UN asked governments and banks, including Portugal, to unblock Venezuelan funds withheld so Venezuela can meet the humanitarian needs of its people.
Source: DN
