A Venezuelan appeals court held a rare hearing today on the case of six imprisoned executives of US refiner Citgo and will issue a decision in 10 working days, a source close to the process told Argus.
By Argus Media – Patricia Garip
Nov 17, 2021
The executives, known as the Citgo-6, remained in Helicoide prison in Caracas during the proceedings, in which the three appeals court judges met for around 90 minutes with six defense lawyers and officials from the attorney general’s office, the source said.
The men were lured to Caracas from Houston in November 2017 and jailed for alleged irregularities surrounding a debt refinancing proposal. They were convicted in November 2020.
The case is considered a test of Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro, who has been trying to coax US President Joe Biden’s administration to lift sanctions.
A bigger test are regional and municipal elections scheduled for 21 November. Opposition parties that long boycotted Venezuela’s elections as fraudulent are taking part for the first time in years, with EU monitors present to determine whether the process is free and fair. The Atlanta-based Carter Center has a modest presence as well.
Citgo, the US refining arm of Venezuelan state-owned PdV, has been controlled by Maduro’s US-backed opponents since 2019. The Houston-based refiner has taken an arms’ length approach to the Citgo-6, but in August the company’s chief executive Carlos Jorda said that the case is a “political ploy” by Caracas.
The executives in mid-October were returned to prison after several months of house arrest, in apparent government retaliation for the extradition to the US of Maduro operative Alex Saab from Cape Verde. Maduro’s delegation the day withdrew from political negotiations with the opposition in México.
Five of the six Citgo executives are naturalized US citizens, including former board members and vice presidents Tomeu Vadell, Gustavo Cardenas, Jorge Toledo, and brothers Jose Luis and Alirio Zambrano. The sixth, former Citgo acting president Jose Pereira, is a permanent US resident.
Citgo has three refineries, two on the US Gulf coast and one in Illinois, with total capacity of around 760,000 b/d.
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Read More: Argus Media – Venezuelan court to rule on Citgo-6 appeal by December
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