Custody or spoils: what holds up the shield around Venezuela's oil revenue
Executive Order 14373 keeps the crude money out of creditors' reach because it declares three things: that it is Venezuela's property, that the United States merely holds it in custody, and that it is not used in commercial activity in the United States. On August 5, in Las Vegas, the president described it as payment for a war. How the shield works, what it rests on, and what would weaken it.
Some of Venezuela's creditors have held final judgments for years with nothing to collect against. In January what looked like the perfect target appeared in front of them: billions of dollars flowing every month into identifiable accounts, on U.S. soil, in the name of a debtor whose external liabilities are estimated — depending on what is counted — at between US$150 billion and US$240 billion. Seven months on, they have not touched a dollar.
What stops them is neither a contract nor a ruling: it is four subsections of Section 4 of Executive Order 14373, which authorize nothing and prohibit nothing, but define what that money is. A great deal more than one lawsuit turns on that definition.
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