The Vice-President of the Economy and People’s s Power Minister of Petroleum, Tareck El Aissami, denounced this Wednesday before the national public opinion and the international community an operation of theft and plundering of the companies CITGO and MONOMEROS, two of the fundamental Venezuelan assets located abroad.
Initially, El Aissami referred to the case of the one hundred percent Venezuelan-owned CITGO Petroleum Corporation, located in the United States, headquartered in Houston, Texas, and which operates three refineries in this country.
In this regard, he denounced that on February 13, 2019, former Deputy Juan Guaidó, during his time in the National Assembly in contempt, appointed an invalid administrative board “because he never had the powers to appoint a representative of the National Executive in any instance.”
He further explained that the “guaidocism,” usurping functions and under the protection of the United States, appointed a board of directors that was recognized in said country and on April 9 of that same year, 2019. The former National Assembly extended the powers to this special board, which he qualified as “another act in violation of the legal order of our Constitution.”
“Another severe case associated with this issue is the plundering of resources of the Simon Bolivar Foundation. It was created in 2006 to attend cases of patients demanding specialized medical attention abroad,” said El Aissami, also highlighting that until 2018 this foundation attended 3,300 patients, and 800 people suffering from chronic diseases were left pending without medical attention. As a result, it leaves 60 patients waiting for transplants.
In this regard, he informed, that the handling of this money is currently under investigation. Since, while there are Venezuelans who are waiting for transplants and specialized medical care, these funds “are in a sort of petty cash for the relatives of Guaidó, Carlos Vecchio, Julio Borges, among other thieves,” he stressed.
Another case denounced by the Sectoral Vice-President of Economy is the one related to the company Monómeros Colombo Venezolanos S.A., which he highlighted that as of 2006 became the exclusive property of the Venezuelan State. And ever since, it was a powerful and productive organization that since 2019 began to be dismantled by the mafias of the Colombian government and the Venezuelan corrupt extreme right-wing.
El Aissami also specified how the company owned by Petroquímica de Venezuela, S.A. (PEQUIVEN) was affected by (the arbitrary, unlawful, and illegal) actions of the right-wing group. In complicity with the government of Colombia, who “hijacked the administration of Monómeros, and this company that was a solvent company, which was at 100% of its productive capacity, today is a bankrupt company, devastated, destroyed by Juan Guaidó and all his criminal and corrupt network”, he emphasized.
In addition to these denunciations, Vice-President El Aissami ratified the firm, unwavering and absolute will of the Bolivarian Government to undertake all legal actions, both domestic and international, for the rescue of both companies.
“We are not going to allow this plundering, this robbery attempted against CITGO and MONOMEROS we are not going to allow it, very soon and we believe so, very soon, we will see results in favor of justice. We invoke international law to stop this arbitrariness. We hope that the U.S. administration will be able to sensibly, in the first place, lift all sanctions against PDVSA”, he explained.