Venezuela Wins Legal Battle To Recover €1.3 Billion Withheld By Portugal’s Novo Banco

THE Venezuelan government announced this Wednesday, August 9, that around €1.3 billion (US$1.5b) held in Portugal had been released.

This money was said to have been retained in the accounts of Venezuelan institutions and companies at the country’s Novo Banco.

Posting on his Twitter account, Freddy Ñañez, the Minister of Communication and Information of Venezuela wrote: ‘The Bolivarian Government of Venezuela wins a lawsuit and recovers its assets in Portugal. One thousand five hundred million dollars were unblocked from Novo Banco’.

Accompanying his message, the minister published screenshots, in Spanish, of the decision made by the Central Civil Court of Lisbon.

According to the documentation presented by Ñañez, the funds were in the accounts of several Venezuelan state companies.

Among them were Bandes, the Economic and Social Development Bank, and the state-owned Petróleos de Venezuela SA (Pdvsa), in addition to several branches.

A court in Lisbon ordered the funds to be returned

The court, according to the same source, ordered the return of funds from Banco Bandes Uruguay SA, Petrocedeño, Pdvsa Services BV, Petromonágas, Petropiar and Bariven.

The Venezuelan opposition party has already reacted to the announcement, insisting that Venezuela will not have access to these funds, due to international sanctions imposed by the US.

‘The protection of the Bandes money that is in Novo Banco is based on US Treasury actions on Bandes and as long as these actions exist, Nicolás Maduro will not have access to that money’, wrote former deputy Carlos Paparoni on the social network.

The money was withheld in 2019

In January 2019, opposition leader Juan Guaidó publicly declared that he would assume the role of interim President of Venezuela until Nicolás Maduro was removed from power.

Guaidó was supported by more than 50 countries, including Portugal, at which point, the funds that Venezuela claims will be released were subsequently withheld.

On February 4, 2019, the Finance Committee of the Venezuelan Parliament, mostly from the opposition, asked Guaidó to protect Venezuela’s assets in Portugal.

‘We sent information on the accounts in which the assets of the Venezuelan State are located in Portugal, to ask Novo Banco and the Portuguese Government to protect Venezuelan assets in that country’, announced the commission.

One day later, Carlos Paparoni announced that Novo Banco had suspended a transfer of €1.050 billion (approx $1.2b) from the Venezuelan State which was destined for Bandes Bank in Paraguay.

Maduro claimed the money would be used to buy ‘medicines and food’

In April 2019, President Nicolás Maduro urged the Portuguese Government to unlock the assets of the Venezuelan State held in Novo Banco, claiming that the funds would be used to buy ‘medicines and food’, as reported by publico.pt.

‘Free Venezuela’s resources sequestered in Europe. I ask the Government of Portugal to unblock the $1.7 billion (approx €1.55 b) that was stolen from us, that was taken from us, and are held in Novo Banco’, said Maduro at an appearance with his supporters.

On May 3, 2019, 19 Venezuelan human rights organisations and social movements went to the Portuguese Embassy in Caracas to ask for the funds to be released.

In a statement sent to the Lusa agency, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Venezuela explained that:  ‘A letter was delivered in which they request the good offices of the Portuguese Government to unblock €1,543 million that was illegally withheld’.

According to the communiqué, the Portuguese diplomatic representation was ‘open to the request and expressed its willingness to process the request’.

‘Banks do not obey the Government’

On May 14, 2019, Augusto Santos Silva, the former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Portugal, told the press in Brussels that Portugal was: ‘A State of law, a political democracy and a market economy’, and, therefore: ‘banks do not obey the government’.

Santos Silva said he was aware of the: ‘dispute between a Portuguese bank and its depositors’, and that this dispute, as is: ‘natural in a State governed by law’, was already in legal and judicial jurisdiction.

In February 2021, the UN asked governments and banks, including those in Portugal, to unfreeze the Venezuelan assets that were withheld, to allow Venezuela to meet the humanitarian needs of its population.