Showing posts with label Supreme Court of Justice. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Supreme Court of Justice. Show all posts

November 28, 2017

Venezuela faces a restructuring between odious creditors and odious debtors, so it behooves us ordinary Venezuelans citizens to intervene and block any odious deals.

Sir, Jonathan Wheatley and Robin Wigglesworth when reporting on the surreal sort of restructuring of Venezuela’s debt by the equally surreal Maduro government write: “Venezuela is already a serial defaulter. It has defaulted on miners, oil companies and other enterprises whose assets it has seized without compensation. It has defaulted on unpaid suppliers to PDVSA, the national oil company. Most seriously, it has defaulted on its people, denying them access to basic foods and medicines, causing an epidemic of weight loss and turning injury or illness into a mortal danger.” “Venezuela bond repayments: dead and alive” November 28.

Sir, the creditors, if they had carried out any minimum due diligence, would have been perfectly aware their financing would not be put to any good use, so for me, all their loans, given only because of juicy risk-premiums or other profit motives, are just odious credits.

And the borrowers, knowing very well they were contracting that debt for no good purposes at all, defines all these borrowings to be odious debts.

So here we are Venezuelans citizens, with children, parents and grandparents dying for lack of food and medicines. Are we now just supposed to sit down and allow this restructuring to happen on whatever odious terms the creditors and the debtors agree on in a petit committee?

No way! As a minimum, for a starter, our General National Assembly not yet in exile needs to authorize our Supreme Court of Justice in exile, to take charge so as to at least determine what could be deemed to be bona fide, dubious, or outright odious credits.


@PerKurowski

A former Executive Director of the World Bank, for Venezuela (2002-2004)

November 22, 2017

What would you as a bare minimum call creditors knowingly financing a government that in itself constitutes a brutal violation of human rights? Odious?

Sir, John Paul Rathbone, Robin Wigglesworth and Jonathan Wheatley, with respect to the surrealistic debt-restructuring initial steps in Venezuela quote Hans Humes of Greylock Capital, who is forming an investor committee with “Ultimately, there is going to be more money made in Venezuela than even in Argentina”. But the authors also rightly conclude in “The geopolitical and humanitarian consequences are likely to be larger still”, “Caracas plays its last cards” November 22.

Sir, “Food is in short supply” does not even begin to describe the tragedy.

Look at Venezuela as a prison. The food and medicines supplies it receives should be more than enough to keep all inmates healthy, but, since the guards have stolen so much of it, many prisoners, many children among them, are dying. And, in order to be able to steal more, the guards also took on huge debts in the name of the prison. And now the original creditors, or those who bought in at a later stage, and who all had all the possibilities of knowing very well what was going on, but that turned a blind eye to it when the interest rates offered by the guards were so irresistibly juicy, they want to be repaid. Will the guards do so? Will the prisoners allow that?

I have for decades called for Venezuela’s oil revenues, lately around 97% of all Venezuela’s exports, to be shared out to all its citizens, as the only way to guard against any odious or just plain dumb exercises of centralized statist power.

So what would happen if now the Venezuelans agree, in a referendum, on doing just that and then proceed to carry out the necessary changes in its constitution; and asks the IMF or the World Bank, with the assistance of other banks, to set up an oil revenue distribution system that keeps all oil exports invoiced in the name of Venezuela’s 30 and so million citizens? I am no lawyer but would a judge in New York approve the embargo of Simoncito’s part of oil, that if received would help to feed and keep Simoncito healthy?

Desperate times calls for desperate solutions, but perhaps some desperate solutions carry the potential of turning into magical solutions. For an oil cursed nation like Venezuela, that might just be what opens up its future to a much better tomorrow.

But the rest of the world could also benefit immensely. We quite frequently hear about the need for a sovereign debt restructuring mechanism, SDRM. If such mechanism started by clearly establishing the fact that most odious debts have its origins in odious credits. There often is prohibition against usury, but even more important for all us citizens all around the world, and especially for those generations of citizens coming after us, to have some sort of mechanism that disincentive the award of odious credits to governments.

In reference to that I am begging Venezuela’s National Assembly to request that Venezuela’s Supreme Court of Justice in exile initiates a process destined to carefully revise the origin of all Venezuela’s credits to see if they can be deemed legitimate or not.


@PerKurowski

November 21, 2017

Jockeying for position to currently advise Venezuela on its debt restructuring could have serious legal, or at least reputational consequences

Sir, Robin Wigglesworth, with respect to Venezuela’s debt writes: “Any restructuring will be a Herculean task, given US sanctions” “Debt restructuring battle brews over Venezuela” November 21.

It is not only the US sanctions. Since many, or probably most Venezuelan consider those debt origination in odious or at least totally non-transparent credits we have not the faintest trust in that negotiators helping the government to restructure is helping us.

So any negotiator now would have blacklisted himself, for those restructuring negotiations that can only begin in earnest when the Maduro government is gone.

Also I cannot understand that, for instance one of the prime renegotiation advisors you mention like the “mysterious art-loving Mexican billionaire called David Martinez”, can be so naïve so as to believe that the threat of US sanction to Americans will not be extended to anyone substituting for Americans.

In summary you do not advise governments that are violating basic human rights without the possibility of facing very serious consequences for that. As a minimum they should be aware that many of us Venezuelan will, when we can, try to recoup any odious restructuring fees paid to them… and keep them away forever from Venezuela

Personally I am much in favor of the Venezuelan Supreme Court of Justice in exile, requested by the Venezuelan National Assembly, initiates the first stage of any debt restructuring, namely classifying all those debts in bona-fide, dubious or odious. 


@PerKurowski

November 05, 2017

What stops a Supreme Court of Justice of Venezuela in exile, to request the embargo of oil unduly received by Russia?

Sir, you suggest that one of the few ways the Maduro regime could manage the restructuring of PDVSA’S bonds, is that “Moscow might… extend the cash Caracas needs to service PDVSA debt in return for cut-price stakes in local oil ventures”, “The geopolitics of Venezuela’s debt” November 5.

You really think Moscow would throw its relative scarce good money at this?

The Venezuelan Constitution in its Article 12 establishes: “Mining and hydrocarbon deposits, whatever their nature, existing in the national territory, under the territorial sea bed, in the exclusive economic zone and on the continental shelf, belong to the Republic, are the property of the Public domain and, therefore, inalienable and imprescriptible.”

And so, though I am not a lawyer, it would seem that any negotiation that assumes that local or foreign oil ventures receive an ironclad guaranteed access to Venezuela’s oil might be very naive.

I ask, if Russians end up taking oil from Venezuela under a shady deal not approved by its real General Assembly, that which is recognized by so many countries, what stops its Supreme Court of Justice in exile to request international courts to embargo it?

As I see it the best thing to happen would be a constitutional reform in Venezuela that decrees all net oil revenues belonging equally to all its citizens. What judge will then order the embargo of oil that belongs to citizens who at this moment need it to avoid death from starvation?

And the biggest benefit of doing so would be freeing the Venezuelans from having to live under the powerful thumb of a government that centralizes all that oil revenue, 97% of all the nation’s exports, in very few hands… sometimes even the hands of outright bandits.

Sir, those who awarded odious credits, should not be able to negotiate behind the back of Venezuela’s people, with those who contracted odious debts.


http://theoilcurse.blogspot.com

@PerKurowski

October 17, 2017

As a bare minimum the real Venezuela should now create a Recovery Inc., to get back what’s been stolen from it.

Sir, I read John Paul Rathbone’s and Shawn Donnan’s “Markets urged to prepare as IMF weighs exceptional Venezuela rescue” October 17. Sadly it misses some important points.

Suppose that there is a new government… because with the current one there is nothing to be done, there should be nothing to be done.

Then you can initiate a worldwide recovery effort of what was stolen from Venezuela and that could, should, yield let us estimate at least $50bn, and that after the bounty hunters or whistleblowers have been paid their commissions.

If you stop giving away gas in Venezuela, something I am trying for the World Bank or the IMF to declare as a punishable economic crime against humanity, then you would release, in a sustainable way, billions in resources year after year. Look at it this way, Venezuela sells gas (petrol) at less than $1 cent per gallon, Norway sells it at $2.07 a gallon.

Also, just clearing the air of the current bandits, would release the energies of at least a million of Venezuelans full of initiatives that are dreaming of returning to their country.

And, if there is not a new government, then an exiled government, like De Gaulle’s French government in London during World War II, and which counts with a legitimate National Assembly, and a legitimate Supreme Court (in exile), could, should, at least get going with Venezuela’s Recovery Inc.

Of course, at the end of the day, the oil revenues must begin to be shared out directly to all Venezuelans, instead of being manipulated by the chiefs of turn, because a tragedy in waiting like Venezuela’s current one, should never be permitted to happen again. 


@PerKurowski

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