US State Dept. Wants Litigation to End"Crystallex Int’l Corp. v. Venezuela, No. 17-00151. Crystallex sought to enforce a judgment against Venezuela through the sale of assets of a state-owned entity that the court had determined to be an alter ego of Venezuela in 2018. The U.S. statement counsels against proceeding with that sale and urges review of the alter ego determination based on changed circumstances in Venezuela..."
"Since recognizing the Guaid government on January 23, 2019, the U.S. government has taken steps, including through additional economic sanctions, to ensure Maduro is not able to liquidate in fire sales the financial assets of Venezuela that are located in United States jurisdictions (and especially CITGO, the crown jewel of PdVSA.) . . . . CITGO is one such example of a national resource that has been placed in legal and economic jeopardy as a result of the actions of former Venezuelan governments. Critical to U.S. foreign policy, the United States assesses that the domestic legitimacy of the interim government under Guaid would be severely eroded were a forced sale of CITGO to take place while the illegitimate Maduro regime still attempts to cling to de facto power in Caracas. The efforts by creditors to enforce judgments against Venezuela by taking immediate steps toward a conditional sale of PdVSA’s U.S.-based assets are detrimental to U.S. policy and the interim government’s priorities. Should these assets be advertised for public auction at this time, the Venezuelan people would seriously question the interim government’s ability to protect the nation’s assets, thereby weakening it and U.S. policy in Venezuela today."
"...the United States respectfully submits that the Court should exercise any such discretion not to proceed toward a sale at this time. The prefatory steps that Crystallex proposes implicate significant U.S. foreign policy and national security interests that are rightly before the Executive Branch in the Crystallex license application, and taking action which advances toward a public auction and contingent sale would serve no purpose if OFAC ultimately denies Crystallex’s license application.
A. OFAC is currently reviewing Crystallex’s license application and is not yet in a position to issue a decision."
"It is well within OFAC’s licensing discretion to evaluate and determine whether to issue Crystallex’s requested license without needing to know the identity of the “winning bidder” in advance. OFAC uses its substantial discretion to evaluate a range of options when considering any specific licensing request, from a decision to deny the license in its entirety, to grant the license in its entirety, to grant the license subject to certain conditions, or even to bifurcate the license request and sequence the authorization of actions in the future. When evaluating a specific licensing request, OFAC could also separately determine that additional information or supplemental specific license requests are needed.