The UK is denying Nicolas Maduro access to Venezuela’s gold worth about $1 billion, stored at the Bank of England. The UK High Court
has ruled that the country does not recognize Maduro as president of
Venezuela, blocking him from accessing the much-needed gold.
England Denies Maduro Access to Venezuela’s Gold
Nicolas
Maduro’s attempt to access his country’s gold stored at the Bank of
England has been dealt a blow as the U.K. High Court ruled against him
on Thursday, blocking his government’s access to $1 billion in gold
reserves.
The gold has been claimed by both Maduro and his rival,
Juan Guaidó, who declared himself acting president of Venezuela last
year. The Maduro government said the gold would help Venezuela cope with
the coronavirus pandemic. However, Guaido alleges that Maduro would use
the gold for corrupt purposes, asking the Bank of England not to hand
over the gold to the Maduro government. Venezuela’s central bank, Banco
Central de Venezuela (BCV), had sued the Bank of England to gain access
to the gold. According to its website, Britain’s central bank holds
around 400,000 bars of gold, worth over £200 billion ($249 billion).
Caught
in the middle of two rival claims for the gold, the Bank of England
asked the High Court to rule on whom the U.K. government recognizes as
the Venezuelan president — Maduro or Guaidó. The court said Thursday
that the U.K. had “unequivocally recognised opposition leader Juan
Guaidó as president,” the BBC reported and quoted Judge Nigel Teare as
saying:
Her Majesty’s government does recognise Mr
Guaidó in the capacity of the constitutional interim president of
Venezuela and, it must follow, does not recognise Mr Maduro as the
constitutional interim president of Venezuela.
The
judge added that there was “no room for recognition of Mr Guaidó as de
jure president and of Mr Maduro as de facto president.”
A
lawyer for the Venezuelan central bank had argued that even though the
U.K. government did not approve of the Maduro government, it still
recognized it de facto. Lawyer Sarosh Zaiwalla commented, “It is very
rare for a case of such international legal importance to be decided by
reference to legal questions alone without taking into account the facts
on the ground.” The Central Bank of Venezuela tweeted on Thursday:
The
BCV will immediately appeal the absurd and unusual decision of an
English court that seeks to deprive the Venezuelan people of the gold so
urgently needed to face covid-19.
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