The Executive Vice President of the Republic, Delcy Rodríguez, denounced that the theft of the Citgo company amounts to approximately $24 billion since 2019. In a press conference, she indicated that the oil company was illegitimately seized by the political extremism «posing as the Venezuelan government.»
The Vice President detailed that the organization that illegally controls Citgo generates between four and five billion dollars annually: «Since 2019, they have accumulated dividends of approximately $24 billion,» as pointed out the high official during her presentation to the media.
Rodríguez also denounced that a US court decided to hand the company over to a vulture fund, which is linked as financier to a high-ranking official in the current US administration. He emphasized that Citgo has an asset value of $12 billion.
«They stole that money, and in the fraudulent process itself was demonstrated that they gave money to Juan Guaidó and Dinora Figuera, president of the self-proclaimed National Assembly of 2015”, stated Rodríguez. She qualified this structure as «an organized criminal gang set to steal the assets and hand them over to a foreign government.»
Rodríguez reiterated that one of the main people responsible for the theft of Citgo is Juan Guaidó, who participated in a special plan designed from the United States to seize Venezuelan assets. She also mentioned that José Ignacio Hernández was one of the lawyers who demanded illegitimate payments from the oil company.
This denounce is framed within the Venezuelan government’s struggle to recover its assets abroad and expose an organized network that plundered the country’s oil resources, in what constitutes one of the most emblematic cases of embezzlement of the nation’s assets.