Of course this whole ploy to force gold companies to sell to the CB is outside all other agreements and the Vz authorities will claim it to be within the law as long as they pay "market prices".

The whole deal then allows them to extract any level of "profit" from the deal by an entirely unrelated process, the licences granted to allow access to the "official exchange rate". All gold producers will be paid the bolivar market price for 70% of their gold but it must logically be at the official exchange rate currently 2.15 to the US dollar. To pay anything else would destroy their control over the exchange rate.

For arbitration purposes, all companies would be said to be treated equally, but the issue of licenses to access foreign currency from the bank at the "official" rate would be a different matter treated on a case by case basis. So any company given access to BUY dollars at the official rate gets the real dollar price, but if that permit was withheld then they would be forced to go to the "unofficial" market and get only 1/3 of the real gold price in dollars.

So Hugo gets out of arbitration by issuing the permit (once he gives the permit there can be no case) and if anyone complains he simply says he is buying the gold at market prices and all companies are treated equally.

NO CASE TO ANSWER!