The National Assembly (AN) approved, in first discussion, the Bill to guarantee freedoms of navigation and commerce against piracy, blockades and other international illicit acts.
This project was presented in the extraordinary session this Monday, where deputy Giuseppe Alessandrello explained that the law seeks to protect the country’s commercial relations and protect Venezuelans from the predatory actions of the United States government in the Venezuelan sea.
The rule includes punishments of up to 20 years in prison for those who support these acts considered “piracy”, in addition to fines in bolivars equivalent to between 100,000 or 1 million times the highest exchange rate published by the Central Bank of Venezuela,” he said, highlighting that the law seeks to protect the national economy and prevent the population’s standard of living from being eroded.
The law consists of two chapters and 11 articles, and its main objective is to “guarantee the freedoms of navigation and trade in goods protected by international treaties ratified by Venezuela”, such as the Geneva Convention on the High Seas of 1958, the convention for the repression of unlawful acts against the safety of maritime navigation of 1988 and the Charter of the United Nations.
“The people of Venezuela, with parsimony, decency and dignity, will respond to all attacks, have no doubt about that,” said the president of the Venezuelan parliament, Jorge Rodríguez.
Rodríguez ordered the referral of the project to a mixed commission made up of the Foreign Policy, Sovereignty and Integration commissions; Economy, Finance and National Development; and Security and Defense of the Nation, in order to carry out a consultation “quickly” and present the text for its second discussion, scheduled for this Tuesday.
He took advantage of the space to reiterate the complaint about the practices that he described as modern piracy and accused the United States of reproducing historical methods of looting and aggression against Venezuela.
