Bank Of England Refuses To Release Venezuela’s Gold After US Lobbying
With Maduro desperately clinging to power in Venezuela – albeit protected by Russian “security contractors” – The Bank of England just ‘virtue-signaled’ another jab in the socialist utopia’s back by confirming its refusal to hand over Venezuela’s gold from its vaults.
Bloomberg reports that Maduro’s embattled regime, desperate to hold onto the dwindling cash pile it has abroad, was stymied in its bid to pull $1.2 billion worth of gold out of the Bank of England, according to people familiar with the matter.
The Bank of England’s (BoE) decision to deny Maduro officials’ withdrawal request comes after top U.S. officials, including Secretary of State Michael Pompeo and National Security Adviser John Bolton, lobbied their U.K. counterparts to help cut off the regime from its overseas assets, according to one of the people, who asked not to be identified.
Mike Krieger recently dug into the gold part of the Venezuelan coup saga. In case you forgot, Hugo Chavez didn’t make any friends in the empire back in 2011 when he repatriated around 160 tonnes of gold from banks in the United States and Europe. But the story doesn’t end there. As Reuters reports:
The government of Nicolas Maduro has since last year been seeking to repatriate about $550 million in gold from the Bank of England on fears it could be caught up in international sanctions on the country.
Its holdings at the bank more than doubled in December to 31 tonnes, or around $1.3 billion, after Venezuela returned funds it had borrowed from Deutsche Bank AG through a financing arrangement that uses gold as collateral, known as a swap, one of the sources said.
Venezuela last year started carrying out gold barter operations with Turkey to import food following U.S. sanctions that have made international banks reluctant to handle Venezuelan transactions.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
