This Tuesday was held the Virtual Forum “The gold of Venezuela in England and the Fight against the blockade”, where participated the president of the Central Bank of Venezuela (BCV), Calixto Ortega, who highlighted that in May 2020 Venezuela sued the Bank of England before the Business and Property Courts of England and Wales, for refusing to comply with the instructions regarding Venezuelan gold.
In the activity, Ortega made an account of the actions taken by oppositionist Juan Guaidó to steal the gold from Venezuela, and reported that in January 2019 Guaidó requested the Bank of England not to deliver the gold to the country. Subsequently, in February 2019, then British Foreign Secretary, Jeremías Hunt, issued political statements in support of Juan Guaidó; (and) already for March that same year, the Bank of England reported the decision not to allow mobilization of the gold deposited on behalf of the BCV.
Following, in April 2019, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) included the BCV in its List of Specially Designated Nationals. However, he stressed, Venezuela continued to work to recover the gold confiscated in England, so in December 2019 the authorities of the BCV and the Ministry for Economy and Finance traveled to the United Kingdom in order to demand the Bank of England to return the Venezuelan gold, (and) even so the Bank of England refused.
Ortega, recalled that for November 2020, Juan Guaidó and his team asked the English Supreme Court for permission to appeal the judgment of the Court of Appeals. It was granted to them in December 2020, and in that December the BCV sent a proposal requesting to pay the COVAX mechanism with the funds withheld, which would guarantee vaccines for the Venezuelan people.
The Attorney General of the Republic, Reinaldo Muñoz, also participated in the forum, who stressed that these actions undertaken by Guaidó were joined by the government of the United States, a country that orchestrated the unilateral coercive measures, and other States that execute them, which generates an atmosphere of anxiety and persecution towards the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.
