Venezuela Blasts White House for Handover of CITGO to Opposition
Orinoco Tribune, May 2, 2023 — Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro expressed his repudiation of the recent resolution signed by the United States government to hand over the Venezuelan company CITGO to “an unknown management group” of a far-right opposition sector belonging to the Unitary Platform.
“On behalf of the people of Venezuela, we reject and repudiate, indignantly, the theft of CITGO by the United States government and the Unitary Platform of Venezuela,” said the head of state at the International Workers’ Day rally held in Caracas on Monday, May 1.
Maduro describe the US resolution as a blatant theft of CITGO—”a company estimated at $8 billion, with more than 10,000 gasoline pumps in the US [and] more than $1 billion in profit annually.” President Maduro noted that the illegal board installed by the opposition has not reported financial results in four years.
The Venezuelan president also noted that the US decision was announced days after the international conference on the political situation of Venezuela hosted by the president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, in Bogotá, Colombia, with the participation of 20 countries. At this conference, almost all participants requested the United States to lift its illegal coercive economic measures—euphemistically referred to as “sanctions”—against the Venezuelan people.
In an official statement, Venezuela reiterated “its denunciation against the United States of America for actions that violate the right to free trade and international law and reiterates its commitment to assert the rights of all Venezuelan people.”
Furthermore, Venezuela’s publicly owned petroleum company, PDVSA, issued a statement in which it condemned “before the international community the policy of aggression by the US government through unilateral and illegal coercive measures, judicial decisions, and other measures of a restrictive and punitive nature.”
At the International Workers’ Day rally in Caracas, President Maduro went on to describe this latest US decision on CITGO as a mockery, “a slap in the face of the international conference that was held in Bogotá on Venezuela… It is a reprehensible decision against the people of Venezuela, [against] sovereignty, and that is why we must all resolutely reject it in the streets.”
President Maduro called on workers to maintain the struggle that they have courageously waged in defense of the nation, peace, and sovereignty, and reaffirmed that Venezuela is “on the right side of history, and that is why we must continue persevering to recover our homeland.”