The President of the Republic, Nicolás Maduro, urged this Monday to articulate “a great campaign” against the sanctions and the persecution against Venezuela to recover the assets and goods of the State withheld abroad.
The call was made after denouncing that it is intended to steal the 31 tons of Venezuelan gold held in London since 2019, valued at approximately 1,600 million euros; and the airplane de Conviasa seized at the beginning of June in Argentina with a Venezuelan and Iranian crew.
“We are going to articulate a great campaign against sanctions, against criminal persecution, for the rescue of our pilots and the Conviasa plane that belongs to Venezuela,” he stated at a balance day in Caracas of the Congress of the New Era, which brings together 43 social and political movements.
He recalled that the plane is used by Venezuela to transport supplies in emergencies, so its retention delayed the country’s aid to Cuba for up to 18 hours due to the fire of supertankers in the province of killings.
He warned that they are trying to steal the plane from Venezuela by decision of a court in the State of Florida, United States, for which he regretted that the sovereignty of the countries and international law are not respected.
«Is there no sovereign domain, is there no respect for sovereignty? Or is it that in Argentina the courts of the United States rule? It is a Venezuelan asset,” said the head of state.
For this reason, he urged the social movements to give “a battle with all communicational, social and political weapons” in the face of the actions that are carried out against the country.
“They have kidnapped the pilots, who have not committed any crime in Venezuela, in Argentina and in any country in the world,” added the president, who asked for the support of Argentine social movements for the release of the pilots.
He asserted that the social movements have two prioritized objectives, one is to fight against the persecution and the other to recover the gold and the plane.
“We are very upset about what they are doing in Argentina (…) enough of the abuse against Venezuela, enough is enough,” stressed Maduro, who ratified the fight of “resistance and rebellion against the permanent aggressions of imperialism.”
In his opinion, the persecution against Conviasa seeks to stop its growth, something that, he affirmed, they have not been able to achieve.
“They have not been able to stop Conviasa, just as they have not been able to stop Venezuela (…) We are not afraid of sanctions, aggression or North American imperialism,” he added.
plane case
The Boeing 747 aircraft belonging to the company Emtrasur, a subsidiary of the Venezuelan airline Conviasa, from Mexico arrived in Argentina on June 6 with a shipment of Volkswagen brand auto parts.
Without having been able to refuel in Buenos Aires, he traveled to Uruguay on June 8, but the authorities of that country denied him entry, so he returned again to the Argentine airport of Ezeiza. Despite the absence of any accusation, the crew of the aircraft is denied leaving Argentine soil.
The plane and the crew were subjected to searches without finding anything of illegal origin, explosives or drugs. On August 2, almost two months after the arrest, an Argentine judge authorized departure from the country of 12 of the 19 crew members. Four Iranians and three Venezuelans remain to be released.
Venezuelan gold situation
On July 29, the British court denied the Venezuelan State’s request for access to the reserves in republic gold that have been held in the Bank of England since 2019.
It was in that year when the British authorities decided to ally themselves with the opposition Juan Guaidó, who ordered the Bank of England not to give power over the assets of the Republic to another representation other than the one designated by him, ignoring the legitimate board of directors of Venezuela chaired by Calixto Ortega, president of the Central Bank of Venezuela (BCV).
In this sense, the most recent sentence of Judge Sara Cockerill of the High Court of London determined that she does not consider as valid the resolutions of the Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ) of Venezuela that declared null the designation of the directive ad hoc of the BCV appointed by Guaidó, alleging that in the United Kingdom there is no legal basis to do so.
