Thread by @venanalysis

When it comes to ConocoPhillips, the US-backed Venezuelan opposition is a gift that keeps on giving. And giving here means giving the oil giant ever better chances of seizing billions-worth of Venezuelan assets. Legendary incompetence or something more? Let's take a look 🧵🧵🧵

The latest development is that the ICSID (World Bank arbitration tribunal) has suspended proceedings to annul an $8.5B award given to ConocoPhillips for a 2007 nationalization of its assets. Why? Because the Juan Guaidó merry band of idiots did not fulfill its payment obligations

This is especially significant because the US-backed pretend administration caught a lot of heat for not showing up in a DC court where ConocoPhillips is looking to have its award enforced. We explained it at length in this piece
venezuelanalysis.com/news/15340

Facing a storm, Guaidó resorted to his most trusted weapon: mumbo-jumbo. His team put out a dense communique saying there was nothing to be done at the US court because... they were concentrating their fire on getting the ICSID award annulled, and they were optimistic!

Here there are 2 points:
1) If there's a case for the award to be annulled, why not present it before the US court as well?
2) When this statement was put out (Oct 4), the opposition had already defaulted on its obligations (see image above)
It's a clown show, or perhaps more...

Not showing up in court was not the *first* Conoco-related scandal for Guaidó's make-believe administration. Days before, a Delaware court report mentioned a $1.3 billion agreement between the US-backed opposition and ConocoPhillips (related to another arbitration award)

This agreement was unconvincingly denied and removed from the report with no explanation, which led many to plausibly speculate whether this was less of a formal agreement than a wink-wink understanding. Say, to not stand in the way in the other arbitration award?

In the thread below we recap this Guaidó legal strategy of turning off the lights and pretending no one's home. We've also gone on the Twitter record predicting that the US puppet will land a sweet gig once the curtain falls on this circus

https://twitter.com/venanalysis/status/1450684280636592129

With all these shenanigans, Conoco and other corporations are inching closer to seizing Venezuelan assets, chief among them oil subsidiary Citgo, valued at $8 billion. US protections of Vzlan assets, to save the opposition's blushes, are likely to be lifted in 2022

But this latest ConocoPhillips development has a gun of the smoking variety (see image). In this email to the CP legal team, check out the first address. Sound familiar? That's Alberto Ravell, none other than the son of Juan Guaidó's comms director (also named Alberto Ravell)

This is worth spelling out. The son of Guaidó's comms director is working as counsel for a corporation that is suing Venezuela and trying to seize assets. And because of a ridiculous decision to "recognize" a self-proclaimed idiot, this is Vzla's representative before US courts

When we say that Venezuela's elites are very tight with corporate interests, this is what we mean. Also, expect the mainstream media, always claiming that Vzla's judiciary/electoral council/etc is not "independent" to have no interest in this scandalous conflict of interest

Stay tuned and follow us as we continue to report on these legal battles, which start to look more and more like convoluted schemes for corporations to lay their hands on Venezuelan assets behind a thick cover of opposition idiocy and incompetence

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