{"id":262014,"date":"2021-08-03T16:35:46","date_gmt":"2021-08-03T16:35:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thecanary.co\/?p=1461842"},"modified":"2021-08-03T16:35:46","modified_gmt":"2021-08-03T16:35:46","slug":"exclusive-juan-guaido-paid-uk-legal-fees-with-looted-venezuelan-money","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/08\/03\/exclusive-juan-guaido-paid-uk-legal-fees-with-looted-venezuelan-money\/","title":{"rendered":"Exclusive: Juan Guaid\u00f3 paid UK legal fees with looted Venezuelan money"},"content":{"rendered":"

Court documents show that Venezuelan opposition figure Juan Guaid\u00f3<\/a>‘s UK legal costs were paid with money appropriated from the Central Bank of Venezuela.<\/p>\n

As part of a legal effort to access roughly US$2bn of Venezuelan gold<\/a> held in the Bank of England, Guaid\u00f3’s legal team drew on hundreds of thousands of dollars \u2013 if not millions \u2013 originally seized from the Central Bank of Venezuela in the US.<\/p>\n

Guaid\u00f3\u2019s attempt to seize Central Bank of Venezuela assets in the UK, in other words, has been financed by money previously seized from the Central Bank of Venezuela.<\/p>\n

This episode of scandalous financial activity is likely to cause alarm in Venezuela given public funds have been deployed to strip even more assets from the Venezuelan state. Over the past two years, Guaid\u00f3 has been implicated in a number of well-documented cases of corruption, embezzlement<\/a>, and paramilitary collaboration<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Bank of England<\/h5>\n

In July 2021, the UK Supreme Court held proceedings<\/a> relating to the roughly US$2bn of Venezuelan gold<\/a> held in the Bank of England. The legal battle began in May 2020, when the Venezuelan government sued the Bank of England over its refusal<\/a> to release the gold.<\/p>\n

The Maduro board had requested<\/a> access to the gold in order to respond to the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic and purchase food. In February 2021, UN independent expert on sanctions Alena Douhan urged<\/a>\u00a0\u201cthe governments of the United Kingdom, Portugal and the United States and corresponding banks to unfreeze assets of the Venezuela Central Bank to purchase medicine, vaccines, food, medical and other equipment\u201d.<\/p>\n

The proceedings centred<\/a> on who the UK government officially recognises as president of Venezuela, and therefore whether the Maduro board or the ad-hoc Guaid\u00f3 board of the Central Bank of Venezuela has the authority to represent and control the bank’s assets held in the Bank of England. Although the UK High Court initially sided<\/a> with the Guaid\u00f3 board, the UK Court of Appeal found<\/a> in October 2020 that the UK\u2019s recognition of Guaid\u00f3 was \u201cambiguous, or at any rate less than unequivocal\u201d.<\/p>\n

One day before the Supreme Court proceedings began, and in an apparent effort to strong-arm<\/a> the judiciary, the UK Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office issued a statement<\/a> claiming:<\/p>\n

The UK government is clear that Juan Guaido has been recognised by [the UK government] since February 2019 as the only legitimate President of Venezuela.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Guaid\u00f3, who has never stood for presidential election, exercises minimal power within Venezuela, while the UK government maintains diplomatic relations<\/a> with the Maduro government.<\/p>\n

Frozen funds<\/h5>\n

After the Maduro board won its appeal in October 2020, the Guaid\u00f3 board was instructed<\/a> to pay \u00a3400,000 to cover the Maduro board\u2019s legal fees<\/p>\n

Ironically, Washington\u2019s brutal sanctions regime<\/a> against Venezuela appeared to make payment difficult.<\/p>\n

In November 2020, Guaid\u00f3\u2019s legal team \u201creceived<\/a> a warning from the commercial court judge, Sara Cockerill, in case of not complying with the payment order imposed by the British justice regarding the litigation for the gold of Venezuela kept in the Bank of England\u201d.<\/p>\n

By December 2020, Guaid\u00f3\u2019s former UK representative Vanessa Neumann<\/a> told<\/a> the Financial Times<\/em> that the US Treasury\u2019s sanctions office OFAC (Office of Foreign Assets Control) \u201chad procrastinated for so long over releasing frozen funds to the Guaid\u00f3 opposition for legal costs that the [UK] court battle was in danger of being lost\u201d.<\/p>\n

Since certain members of the Maduro board were under US sanctions, the Guaid\u00f3 board had to seek a license from the OFAC in order to make the payment.<\/p>\n

Robbing Peter to rob Peter<\/h5>\n

Documents read into open court in the UK demonstrate that the Guaid\u00f3 board\u2019s \u00a3400,000 legal costs were eventually paid, weeks late, with money appropriated from the Central Bank of Venezuela in the US.<\/p>\n

In April 2020, the US government transferred<\/a> US$342m of Central Bank of Venezuela assets from Citibank to an account at the US Federal Reserve in New York. The Central Bank of Venezuela had defaulted on payments to Citibank because it could not access its reserves in the Bank of England.<\/p>\n

Previously, US secretary of state Mike Pompeo had permitted Guaid\u00f3 and his appointees to receive and control property of the Central Bank of Venezuela in the Federal Bureau of New York. In a move denounced<\/a> by the Venezuelan government as \u201cvulgar plundering\u201d, the US government effectively transferred US$342 of Venezuelan state assets directly to Guaid\u00f3.<\/p>\n

It is these funds that the Guaid\u00f3 board tapped into in order to finance its UK legal efforts.<\/p>\n

According to witness testimony provided by the Guaid\u00f3 board to the UK courts:<\/p>\n

The only funds under the control of the Guaid\u00f3 Board are those in accounts in the name of BCV [Central Bank of Venezuela] at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in the US.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The representative added:<\/p>\n

All of the BCV assets controlled by the Guaid\u00f3 Board are in accounts of the BCV located in the US.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In other words, the only funds available to the Guaid\u00f3 board were those appropriated from the Central Bank of Venezuela in the US.<\/p>\n

Indeed, the Guaid\u00f3 board acknowledged that:<\/p>\n

The Maduro Board has registered a protest at the use of BCV funds in the US under the control of the Guaid\u00f3 Board to discharge the [\u00a3400,000] costs order in the Maduro Board\u2019s favour.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In separate witness statement, the Guaid\u00f3 board\u2019s legal representative emphasised that:<\/p>\n

Interim President Guaid\u00f3 and his appointees have legitimate control under US law of funds held in a US federal reserve bank to which the Maduro Board has no legitimate claim.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The payment of \u00a3400,000 was eventually delivered on 7 December 2020 – but “it comes from BCV funds, rather from the Guaid\u00f3 Board members”, Maduro’s legal counsel complained.<\/p>\n

The use of state assets for such purposes suggests how Guaid\u00f3 might utilise Venezuela’s gold reserves in the UK should he win the legal battle.<\/p>\n

Hundreds of millions of dollars of Venezuelan assets looted<\/a> in the US have already been used to fund the construction of Trump’s militarised US-Mexico border wall.<\/p>\n

Hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions<\/h5>\n

Registering incredulity, the Maduro board\u2019s legal counsel told the court:<\/p>\n

Instead of paying, the Guaid\u00f3 Board members have caused \u00a3400,000 of the [Central Bank of Venezuela’s] monies to be sent to the Maduro Board.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Maduro legal counsel added:<\/p>\n

Remarkably, since the $342 million at the Federal Reserve is money that was the proceeds of a gold swap with Citibank seized in the USA by the Guaid\u00f3 Board, it seems that the Guaid\u00f3 Board is in reality making a proposal to pay that is tantamount to seeking to use the Central Bank\u2019s own funds, seized by the Guaid\u00f3 Board, to pay the sum that the Court of Appeal ordered the Guaid\u00f3 Board to pay.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Even more remarkably, the Maduro board\u2019s legal counsel noted:<\/p>\n

it also appears\u2026 that the Guaid\u00f3 Board may be paying the legal fees and disbursements of [its legal counsel] A&P \u2013 reckoned by A&P at in excess of US$3.8 million as at mid-July 2020 \u2013 from the monies belonging to the BCV at the Federal Reserve Bank in New York.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It thus appears plausible that the Guaid\u00f3 Board has used multiple millions of dollars appropriated from the Central Bank of Venezuela in order to appropriate even more funds from that same bank.<\/p>\n

Tightening the screw on Venezuela<\/h5>\n

Though UK officials insist<\/a> on the political independence of the Bank of England, the freezing of Venezuelan assets forms a clear part of the US- and UK-led campaign of hybrid warfare against Venezuela, a crucial part of which involves destroying the country\u2019s economy.<\/p>\n

In 2018, former UK foreign secretary Boris Johnson acknowledged that sanctions amount to collective punishment against the civilian population, telling <\/a>G20 foreign ministers in Buenos Aires:<\/p>\n

The feeling I get from talking to my counterparts is that they see no alternative to economic pressure \u2013 and it\u2019s very sad, because obviously the downside of sanctions is that they can affect the population that you don\u2019t want to suffer. But in the end things have got to get worse before they get better \u2013 and we may have to tighten the economic screw on Venezuela.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In January 2019, then foreign minister Jeremy Hunt visited the US. According to briefing notes seen by The Canary<\/em>, the foreign minister met with senior US officials Mike Pompeo and John Bolton, who privately thanked Hunt for the UK\u2019s position on Venezuela. The internal report added:<\/p>\n

Your remarks on Venezuela aired as the top story across UK broadcast media, and your tweet of the video reached your biggest ever social media audience.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Bolton would later write<\/a> that Hunt \u201cwas delighted to cooperate on steps they could take, for example freezing Venezuelan gold deposits in the Bank of England\u201d.<\/p>\n

The issue of the Venezuelan gold held in the Bank of England is therefore fundamentally political, and cannot be separated from the US-led effort<\/a> to destabilise and overthrow the Venezuelan government.<\/p>\n

Lethal weapon in the UK’s foreign policy arsenal<\/h5>\n

If Guaid\u00f3’s legal effort is successful, the threat or act of de-recognition could become a lethal weapon in the UK’s foreign policy arsenal, serving as a justification to asset strip a foreign state and then deliver those assets to individuals allied with UK foreign policy interests.<\/p>\n

Sarosh Zaiwalla, senior partner at Zaiwalla & Co., which represented the Maduro board of the Central Bank of Venezuela, commented:<\/span><\/p>\n

This case treads a fine line between law and politics. Mr Guaid\u00f3\u2019s legal case seeks to position him as being above the rule of law in both Venezuela and the United Kingdom on the basis of a statement made by the United Kingdom Government.<\/p>\n

It is absurd that \u20ac1.6 billion of a country\u2019s gold held in the UK can on that basis be withheld from the government in control of that state and be given to representatives of Mr Guaid\u00f3, who has no control of any apparatus of state. Such a result would have potentially serious and adverse ramifications for the City of London as a safe place to sovereign assets.<\/span><\/p>\n

The simple reality in this case is that any ruling upholding Mr Guaid\u00f3\u2019s purported appointments, if recognised, would fly in the face of reality. His purported appointees have no ability to act on behalf of the Banco Central de Venezuela in any effective way in Venezuela.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Supreme Court is expended to hand down its decision in late Summer or Autumn 2021.<\/p>\n

Featured image via screengrab\/RT UK<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

By John McEvoy<\/a><\/p>\n\n

This post was originally published on The Canary<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Court documents show that Venezuelan opposition figure Juan Guaid\u00f3\u2018s UK legal costs were paid with money appropriated from the Central Bank of Venezuela. As \u2026 <\/p>\n

Read more<\/a><\/div>\n

By John McEvoy<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1892,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22618,5587,365,33033,52,118,8076,1395,59],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262014"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1892"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=262014"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262014\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":262848,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262014\/revisions\/262848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=262014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=262014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=262014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}