Despite the fact that Venezuela's assets are blocked in the United States by the sanctions applied by the Donald Trump administration in August 2019, the Treasury Department has powers to grant a license that allows Crystallex to take over the shares of Citgo. That would be one of the Canadian's resources to collect the debt for the expropriation that Hugo Chávez carried out against her in 2011.

“ The question here is whether the Treasury Department will issue the license. Right now what is going to happen is that Crystallex, who now has a final judgment, says: ' And I already won my case, the Supreme Court gave me the reason, so I should get a license. ' I don't dare to give probabilities, but with this decision that possibility opens up and sooner or later it will happen. This decision implies that Citgo was lost, the question is when can this action be carried out by creditors, ” says economist Francisco Rodríguez in an interview with Crónica.Ono .

In 2017, Crystallex claimed that Pdvsa met the legal definition of alter ego to movements of the Republic, so he asked the District Court of Delaware a garnishment order on shares of PDV Holding Inc . and thus be able to execute the ruling in its favor ordered by the World Bank's International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) in 2016. The Canadian demonstrated that PDVSA was not being administered as a company other than the State, but rather because the opposite was handled like a petty cash of the State, explains Rodríguez.

Crystallex returned to using the alter ego resource after the arrival of the interim government in 2019 with the decision of the National Assembly (AN) to appoint Citgo's Board of Directors. The economist maintains that the Parliament could name the board of directors of PDVSA because the owner is the Republic, but not that of Citgo, in the latter case, who had the powers to do so was PDVSA.

The AN, in an inexplicable action, goes directly to appoint Citgo's board of directors and this was a big mistake . Crystallex demonstrated that the interim government was violating this principle in the same way that the Chávez government did, ”he says.

Between 2008 and 2011, the government of Hugo Chávez executed a policy of expropriations against several foreign companies, as well as national ones. To date, more than a dozen lawsuits remain open before him.

The interim government issued a statement on Monday in which it assures that it will present a motion requesting the Delaware District Court to review the decision to consider PDVSA as an alter ego of the Republic, based on the fact that "the state did not play any role in the expropriation of Crystallex's assets ”.

In the opinion of the economist, what happens in the future with Citgo's actions will depend on what the United States Government decides, this happens by maintaining the protection of Venezuela's assets in that country or if the Treasury issues a license to please Crystallex to authorize you to proceed with the seizure. The Canadian already has a sentence in her hands with the decision of the Supreme Court.

" If the Treasury does nothing then Crytallex cannot seize, what happens is that Crystallex is obviously going to ask for this license and it can be a very solid argument, this judgment is final. You have to see what the Treasury decides ” , he concludes.