Venezuela, The Starving Socialist Dystopia (Part 1)

If I was a banker in China or Russia, I'd cut my losses now. They're throwing good money after the bad. Maduro's government is a bottomless pit of corruption and incompetence. No amount of foreign aid money will save it.

It started out a political investment purely to counter the U.S' influence in Latin America rather than a sound financial investment in any shape or form, a very costly one that they're starting to regret.

Russia, China And Iran Lose Interest In Venezuela
By Yale Global - Jan 08, 2018,

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Since the election of Hugo Chávez Frias to the Venezuelan presidency in 1998, followed by Nicolás Maduro in 2013, Venezuela has endured steady decline with the approval of the new constitution in 1999, concentration of presidential power, the capture of state and private institutions, gradual control over the press, mismanagement of its national oil company and establishment of a failed political project known as the “socialism of the 21st century.”

With 81.8 percent of Venezuelan households in poverty, 1.5 million of its citizens leaving the country, 78 percent of medical centers suffering from a supply of medications, an inflation rate that may pass 2,300 percent in 2018, oil revenues cut by half and shortages of gasoline, Chávez and Maduro literally ruined the country.

These economic challenges have influenced foreign relations. Alliances sought to counter the United States are starting to backfire. The official line is that the government is strengthening strategic relations with partners like Moscow and Beijing as well as Tehran. But the Maduro administration has exaggerated the strength of those ties.

The priority is not helping Venezuela but countering U.S. hegemony in regional politics. For example, Russia and China did not attend an informal November meeting of the UN Security Council that sought to condemn Venezuela for human rights violations and undermining the country’s constitutional order. Vassily Nebenzia, Russia’s permanent representative to the UN, stood alongside Venezuelan counterpart Rafael Ramirez who denounced Washington for a "crusade" against Caracas.

Russia and China help bankroll Venezuela, but a Bulltick Capital report suggests a 90 percent probability that Venezuela will struggle to repay its debts and other financial obligations this year – a problem for both countries that have lent Venezuela billions of dollars and paid for oil in advance. Rosneft sent $6 billion to its Venezuelan equivalent, PDVSA, in early 2017 and announced in August it planned no more advance payments. Russia gave Venezuela a brief break in November by agreeing to restructure about $3 billion in loans, buying Maduro time to pay off other creditors and assure bondholders. After helping Venezuela three times in 2017, Russia might be running out of patience. Nevertheless, Moscow’s loans to the Venezuelan government form part of a strategy that uses Rosneft to achieve foreign policy objectives.

In fact, Russia behaves like a predatory lender when it comes to Caracas. The newspaper El Nacionalreported in October that Moscow and Beijing took over refineries in Paraguana, “renting” them. The move is controversial, violating the 2006 Law of Organic Hydrocarbons, ironically a Chávez instrument. Venezuelan law indicates that only national firms registered in the National Registry of Contractors can work for the state.

Trade with Russia has increased since 2005, and a joint venture to export flowers began in 2006. But Moscow did not need Venezuelan oil and commerce with Brazil carried higher priority. By 2008, the large asymmetry in trade imbalances emerged between the two countries: Venezuela imported $967.4 million, mostly military purchases, while exporting $320,000 dollars in goods to Russia. After 2006 when the United States refused to sell American military technology to Caracas, Russia became primary provider with sales based on credit, either from Russian banks or the government.

Moscow maintains military relations with Caracas mostly for geopolitical, propaganda and symbolic reasons. Venezuela supported the 2008 Russian incursion into Georgia and invited the Russian nuclear warship Peter the Great to conduct joint exercises in the Caribbean, essentially the U.S. backyard. In 2016 at the United Nations, Venezuela voted to support Russia against a resolution for a ceasefire in Aleppo. In February 2017, Venezuelan Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez described Russia as a global actor that supports global stability and lauded Moscow’s role in confronting international challenges. In turn, Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov declared that Russian-Venezuelan relations were “booming,” and a few months later an agreement was revealed – Russia would supply Venezuela with 60,000 tons of wheat per month, although the same could be obtained at lower cost from Argentina.
Venezuela has tried to diversify its benefactors and reduce dependence on the American oil market. The 2001 visit of Jiang Zemin, the first of a Chinese president to Venezuela, and of Chávez to Beijing in 2002 marked the start of a diplomatic pivot for Caracas in Asia. Chinese commerce with Venezuela has grown exponentially since. In 2014 China became the nation’s second largest trading partner with more than $15.7 billion in trade. China has since replaced Russia, long considered Venezuela’s key military ally, as its major supplier of armament and defense technology. China offers more advanced technologies and provides better service in terms of maintenance and replacement parts. At the same time, Venezuela has opposed condemnations against China for human rights violations and supported Beijing in the search for global use of alternatives to the dollar.

Although China has lent Venezuela more than $60 billion, it recently suspended further loans to Caracas. Chinese Sinopec, the oil and gas conglomerate, sued Venezuela’s national oil company PDVSA in December because it did not receive full payments for its orders. Chinese companies are also reported to have lost interest in investing in Venezuela due to the high levels of corruption.

Venezuela also has ties with Iran. Iranian revolutionary ideology in the 1980s was influenced by Latin American leftist doctrine and the two countries constructed consensus around an "anti-imperialist" axis. Since 2001, both countries have reached more than 340 agreements in technology, health, industry, infrastructure, culture, defense and housing. Nevertheless, the vast majority of these agreements have not been implemented. A 2006 joint venture between former Chávez and Iran’s former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to build cars through Venirauto Industrias C.A. generated losses and was largely unsuccessful. Another joint venture to produce corn flour struggled with low productivity despite high demand for the product in Venezuela. By 2014, Iran canceled a project of the Persian Gulf Petrochemicals Holding in Venezuela. Iran’s Rokneddin Javadi, former deputy oil minister of Iran, admitted that establishing offices of the National Iranian Oil Company in Venezuela had no economic justification but rather served political purposes.

In return, Venezuela was one of the few nations to oppose the International Atomic Energy Agency’s efforts to present the Iranian nuclear program case to the UN Security Council in 2006. Venezuela supported Iran in criticizing Israel, and in January that year broke off diplomatic relations in response to the Israeli offensive in Gaza. In November 2007 at OPEC’s third summit, Chávez tried to persuade members to transform into a more active geopolitical group that supported Iran. Saudi Arabia opposed that proposal.

A military relationship between Iran and Venezuela is in question. Some have accused Iran of installing intermediate missile systems in the country, though General Douglas Fraser, former head of the U.S. Southern Command, dismissed an Iranian military presence in Venezuela. Nevertheless, some officials like Vice President Tareck el Aissami are reported to have provided assistance to Iran and Hezbollah. In 2013, state-owned Venezuelan weapons company CAVIM was sanctioned for trade with Iran. Under Chávez in 2008, trade between both nations was approximately $57 million with additional investments.

For Iran, China and Russia, Venezuela is a small and distant priority. The country’s value is for needling the United States, much less necessary with the distractions and “America first” policies endorsed by Donald Trump. Venezuela’s chaotic economic crisis is more pressing as its relationship with Russia, Iran and China weaken. The imbalanced relationships ensure that Venezuela is but a pawn for legitimizing those countries' policies on the world stage rather than advancing a real agenda of its own.

https://oilprice.com/Geopolitics/International/Russia-China-And-Iran-Lose-Interest-In-Venezuela.html
 
The starvation and hunger is what gets people to start fighting mate. Look at where we are now in the US that the citizenry, especially in places like CA and NY put up with. Do you imagine there would be that kind of leniency if they were hungry?
They were hungry last summer and flooded the streets. It got worse, the military kept control and the people got too weak. It is disgusting but they have been beaten down by a lack of resources.
 
The starvation and hunger is what gets people to start fighting mate. Look at where we are now in the US that the citizenry, especially in places like CA and NY put up with. Do you imagine there would be that kind of leniency if they were hungry?


It will only make people fight it becomes Somalia levels of starvation and it will be ugly there will be mass deaths! And no matter how loyal the military to Maduro it will soon colapse even their families are being robbed and the people no longer fear the conesquences.

We are talking post appocalyptic levels of Anarchy it will sadly interesting if it will go like that or just end up like N.Korea.

I think N.Korea has reach that level of famine in the mid 90s but there were no mass unrests people just died in the concentration camps maybe the N.Koreans just have a different mindset since that country was built from the ground up thru oppression and poverty.
 
It will only make people fight it becomes Somalia levels of starvation and it will be ugly there will be mass deaths! And no matter how loyal the military to Maduro it will soon colapse even their families are being robbed and the people no longer fear the conesquences.

We are talking post appocalyptic levels of Anarchy it will sadly interesting if it will go like that or just end up like N.Korea.

I think N.Korea has reach that level of famine in the mid 90s but there were no mass unrests people just died in the concentration camps maybe the N.Koreans just have a different mindset since that country was built from the ground up thru oppression and poverty.

Great reason for the US citizenry to retain its capability to defend itself.
 
They were hungry last summer and flooded the streets. It got worse, the military kept control and the people got too weak. It is disgusting but they have been beaten down by a lack of resources.

This, and after the protests last summer, it seemed to be at least somewhat stable... despite being in a collapse.. and stable collapse.

My lady friend is from there (left a year ago). She is some a quiet, beach town, and was relatively safe and doing well, despite the collapse, until the past 2 weeks. In last two weeks, her families businesses have been looted and destroyed.

Her parents and 2 of her siblings and their families still live there. They were planning to move here at the end of this year or early next year, waiting to see if they could sell more of their businesses and property. However the last 1-2 weeks has them on edge, and they now are planning to move here in 3months, when one of here sisters finishes chemotherapy.

Very scary... 2 days ago she was actually crying and breaking down about the situation there. She knows 2 people who have been killed in the last year, but now if somewhat freaking out about her family.
 
Venezuela crisis: Helicopter launches attack on Supreme Court



Venezuela's Supreme Court has been attacked by grenades dropped from a helicopter in what President Nicolás Maduro called a "terrorist attack".

Footage on social media shows a police helicopter circling over the city before shots and a loud bang are heard.

The police officer said to have piloted the stolen aircraft issued a statement denouncing the "criminal government". His whereabouts are unknown.

It comes after mass protests against the political and economic crisis.

The Supreme Court is regularly criticised by the Venezuelan opposition for its rulings which bolster Mr Maduro's hold on power.

What happened?

In an address from the presidential palace, President Maduro said the helicopter had flown over the Supreme Court and also the justice and interior ministries.

Officials quoted by Reuters news agency said four grenades were dropped on the court and 15 shots had been fired at the interior ministry.

No injuries were reported but Mr Maduro said "a social event" had been taking place at the Supreme Court and the attack could have caused "dozens of deaths". One of the grenades failed to detonate, he added.

Mr Maduro has placed the military on alert.

"I have activated the entire armed forces to defend the peace," he said. "Sooner or later, we are going to capture that helicopter and those who carried out this terror attack."

Who flew the helicopter?

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The police officer identified himself as Oscar Pérez in video statements posted on the social media platform Instagram.

Appearing in military fatigues and flanked by armed, masked men in uniform, he appealed to Venezuelans to oppose "tyranny".

"We are a coalition of military employees, policemen and civilians who are looking for balance and are against this criminal government," he said.

"We don't belong to any political tendency or party. We are nationalists, patriots and institutionalists."

He said the "fight" was not against the security forces but "against the impunity of this government. It is against tyranny".

It is not clear how much support, if any, the officer has.

Mr Maduro said the pilot had worked for former Interior and Justice Minister Miguel Rodriguez Torres, but was no longer with him.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-40426642




Deadly Siege of Venezuela Rebels Led by Former Action Hero Transfixes Country
By NICHOLAS CASEY | JAN. 15, 2018

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In a deadly shootout on Monday that transfixed Venezuela, security forces surrounded the Caracas hide-out of a rebel band led by a rogue helicopter pilot who was once an action movie actor and is now the government’s most wanted man.

“They don’t want us to surrender, they want us dead!” the rebel leader, Óscar Pérez, shouts in one of a series of videos posted on Twitter that showed him bloodied and under siege.

In a statement on Monday, Venezuelan officials said they had dismantled what they called a dangerous terrorist group, saying five members had been captured. Two police officers were killed and five were injured, they said.

Photos posted on social media sites that were said to have been leaked from the scene of the firefight showed what were believed to be the bodies of dead rebels.

Mr. Pérez rose to fame last year during street protests against President Nicolás Maduro as a daring dissident police officer revolting against the government.

In June, he and a small group commandeered a helicopter in the capital, Caracas. They used it to drop grenades onto the Supreme Court building and open fire on the Interior Ministry in a brazen midday attack.

Mr. Pérez then unfurled a banner calling on Venezuelans to rebel against Mr. Maduro, to the cheers of protesters below. He later released a video in which he and a masked band repeated their calls of rebellion.

While no one was injured in that attack, it was an embarrassment for the government, and it vowed to capture him.

It also signaled the rise of one of the most improbable figures in Venezuela’s political turmoil last year: a police officer who had once starred in a low-budget action movie about a crime squad. Now, it seemed, he was playing a real-life version of the character he had portrayed.

On Monday, Venezuelans were glued to the unfolding events on social media. Early in the morning, Mr. Perez announced that his location had been discovered. Then he began releasing a series of videos.

“We’re negotiating with the officials and the prosecutors,” he says calmly into the camera in one of the first messages, appearing in a dark room. Other rebels can be heard in the background shouting into phones.

In a later video, posted after daybreak, Mr. Pérez turns the camera outside, where government officials can be seen calling up to him.

“We’re not criminals,” he tells them. “We’re patriots who are fighting for our convictions.”

In the videos, Mr. Pérez is heard saying repeatedly that his group will surrender because it is accompanied by civilians. He says they do not want a fight.

But in a later video, the two sides appear to have stopped talking and begun battle. A rebel in a helmet and flak jacket can be seen taking cover beside a wall while another holds a rifle behind a filing cabinet.

“Hold your fire!” someone shouts.

While Mr. Pérez said last year that he had hoped others would take up his call, he has looked increasingly alone in recent months.

After appearing in public during an anti-government rally in July, Mr. Pérez largely disappeared from public view. While some members of the security forces staged rebellions of their own in the time afterward, top military officials stayed loyal to Mr. Maduro’s government. Mr. Pérez’s abandoned helicopter was found by the government shortly after the June attack.

Perhaps most demoralizing to Mr. Pérez and his followers was the disbanding of street protests against Mr. Maduro that took place after the president consolidated power by dissolving the opposition-controlled Congress and establishing a new one packed with loyalists.

On Monday, a video attributed to Mr. Pérez’s mother was posted on Twitter in which she pleaded with the government to allow him to surrender.

But the firefight continued.

“They’re throwing grenade after grenade,” he said, his face bloodied as he crouched behind an oven with his rifle. “They’re shooting at us. Venezuelans: Freedom forever!”

In one of the last messages, Mr. Pérez appears exhausted. His face is covered with blood and he is panting. The sounds of gunshots ring in the background.

“They don’t want us to surrender,” he says.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/15/world/americas/venezuela-rebels-maduro.html
 
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Venezuela forces launch deadly assault, capture rebel police officers
By Antonio Maria Delgado | January 15, 2018

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Members of the Venezuelan Bolivarian Intelligence Service arrive at the Junquito highway during an operation to capture Oscar Perez in Caracas, Venezuela.

Venezuelan special forces on Monday captured five members of a band led by a rebel police officer who has been on the run for six months.

The capture followed a deadly early-morning assault in a village outside Caracas that ended with at least two officers killed and five injured, the government reported.

It was not clear if the rebel group’s leader Óscar Pérez survived the assault, but CNN reported — citing a high government source — that he had been killed.

“The former policeman died in a shootout with the Venezuelan National Police Monday morning,” the source, who spoke under condition of anonymity, told CNN.

Previously, the Ministry of Interior reported that “the members of this terrorist cell who conducted armed resistance were taken down and five criminals captured and detained.”

The assault was made public early Monday by Pérez himself, who posted video snippets on social media, including one in which he appears with a bloodied face.

“They are firing at us with RPG, grenades and grenade launchers, snipers,” Pérez says in one video. “There are civilians in here. We told them that we’re going to turn ourselves in and they don’t want to let us surrender. They want to kill us.”

Pérez — a former police officer who says he’s a fighter against the Nicolás Maduro regime — is wanted by the government for an attack he led from a stolen police helicopter against the Supreme Court and Interior Ministry headquarters in Caracas.

By midday Monday, the government announced that Pérez and other “terrorists” had been captured following a deadly gunfire exchange at a village outside the capital that killed at least one government officer and injured as many as 10 others.

“The terrorist Oscar Pérez attacked those around him,” socialist party leader Diosdado Cabello posted on Twitter. “Security forces returned fire.”

In the first of several videos released via social media Monday morning, Pérez announced that he and a small group of men were still alive, despite the early-morning assault.

“Here we are, here we are, alive and well, the whole team, we are on the new Junquito road (on the outskirts of Caracas), the whole team,” he said. “Here come the government people. We are surrounded. Information on our whereabouts was leaked, but the battle for the homeland continues.

“For those who had doubts that we are fighting, they have fired at us, we are crouched, but we are already negotiating with the officials, the prosecutors,” Pérez continued in the video, in which he also asks Venezuelans not to lose hope and to fight for freedom.

At least one other man appears with Pérez carrying assault rifles.

About a half-hour after the first video made its rounds on social media, a second video circulated showing Pérez with a bloodied face. Meanwhile, Pérez’s mother issued a plea to the Maduro government to allow her son to surrender.

“He is trying to give himself up and they will not let him in. Let him surrender,” Aminta Pérez said in a third video. “Spare his life. If anything happens to him, you will be responsible.”

Penitentiary Service Minister María Iris Varela also took to Twitter on Monday to defend the assault: “Oscar Pérez , now comes the show of tears. How cowardly he looks trapped like a rat! Where was his courage to hold up military units, killing and wounding officials and stealing weapons? … Those bandits must contend with the new regime.”

The 36-year-old Óscar Pérez rose to notoriety in July 2017 when, amid anti-government protests that left more than 100 dead in Venezuela, he launched several grenades from a stolen police helicopter aimed at two government buildings in Caracas.

No one was injured and the building suffered minor damage, but his name became known to the people — and to authorities. He has since been a fugitive.

Pérez has used social media to call on Venezuelans to rise up against the Maduro government. He has published several videos stating that his fight is for his children and “all the children” of Venezuela.

In addition to being a trained officer, Pérez is an actor, pilot and dog trainer. Many within Venezuela have cast doubt on the legitimacy of his attacks, seeing them as a potential ruse to support Maduro’s assertion the nation is regularly assaulted by opposition conspirators, though some friends have spoken in his defense.

Pérez appeared in online videos in December showing him and a small armed band taking over a small military outpost and smashing a portrait of Maduro with his foot.

Pérez and the assailants berated several detained guardsmen for doing nothing to help their fellow citizens suffering from hunger. Maduro responded in the following days, vowing to meet Pérez with bullets.

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/venezuela/article194721704.html
 
Time to invade?

For what exactly? :rolleyes:

In case you haven't been paying attention, all their best assets have already been transferred to Putin in the last 24 months in exchange for the loans Maduro needs to feed his loyalists. I have no interest for Uncle Sam to engage in Dumpster Diving, especially when that dumpster full of bio-hazard waste is already on fire.

This is one freakshow that we should watch from distance, with a large bucket of popcorn.

Special Report: Vladimir's Venezuela - Leveraging loans to Caracas, Moscow snaps up oil assets

Venezuela’s unraveling socialist government is increasingly turning to ally Russia for the cash and credit it needs to survive – and offering prized state-owned oil assets in return, sources familiar with the negotiations told Reuters.

As Caracas struggles to contain an economic meltdown and violent street protests, Moscow is using its position as Venezuela’s lender of last resort to gain more control over the OPEC nation’s crude reserves, the largest in the world.

Venezuela’s state-owned oil firm, Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), has been secretly negotiating since at least early this year with Russia’s biggest state-owned oil company, Rosneft (ROSN.MM) - offering ownership interests in up to nine of Venezuela’s most productive petroleum projects, according to a top Venezuelan government official and two industry sources familiar with the talks.

Moscow has substantial leverage in the negotiations: Cash from Russia and Rosneft has been crucial in helping the financially strapped government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro avoid a sovereign debt default or a political coup.

Rosneft delivered Venezuela’s state-owned firm more than $1 billion in April alone in exchange for a promise of oil shipments later. On at least two occasions, the Venezuelan government has used Russian cash to avoid imminent defaults on payments to bondholders, a high-level PDVSA official told Reuters.

Rosneft has also positioned itself as a middleman in sales of Venezuelan oil to customers worldwide. Much of it ends up at refineries in the United States – despite U.S. sanctions against Russia – because it is sold through intermediaries such as oil trading firms, according to internal PDVSA trade reports seen by Reuters and a source at the firm.

PDVSA and the government of Venezuela did not respond to requests for comment.

The Russian government declined to comment and referred questions to the foreign ministry and the ministries of finance and defense, which did not respond to questions from Reuters. Rosneft declined to comment.

Russia’s growing control over Venezuelan crude gives it a stronger foothold in energy markets across the Americas. Rosneft now resells about 225,000 barrels per day (bpd) of Venezuelan oil - about 13 percent of the nation’s total exports, according to the PDVSA trade reports. That’s about enough to satisfy the daily demand of a country the size of Peru.

Venezuela gives Rosneft most of that oil as payment for billions of dollars in cash loans that Maduro’s government has already spent. His administration needs Russia’s money to finance everything from bond payments to imports of food and medicine amid severe national shortages.

For a graphic detailing the decline of Venezuela's oil industry, see: tmsnrt.rs/2fwsuCV

Venezuela’s opposition lawmakers say Russia is behaving more like a predator than an ally.

”Rosneft is definitely taking advantage of the situation,” said Elias Matta, vice president of the energy commission at Venezuela’s elected National Assembly. “They know this is a weak government; that it’s desperate for cash - and they’re sharks.”

Matta echoed many others in the opposition-majority congress who have blasted corporate deals they say are underpinning Maduro’s efforts to establish a dictatorship.

The Venezuelan government has said previously that Russia’s investment in its oil industry shows confidence in PDVSA’s financial stability and the nation’s business opportunities.

Maduro’s administration has grown increasingly dependent on Moscow in the past two years as China has curtailed credit to Venezuela because of payment delays and the corruption and crime faced by Chinese firms operating there, according to Venezuelan debt analysts and two oil industry sources.

Many multinational firms worldwide, meanwhile, have all but written off their Venezuelan operations amid the nation’s tanking economy and chronic shortages of raw materials.

Rosneft is making the opposite play - using Venezuela’s hard times as a buying opportunity for oil assets with potentially high long-term value.

”The Russians are catching Venezuela at rock bottom,” said one Western diplomat who has worked on issues involving Venezuela’s oil industry in recent years.

As other companies shutter operations here, Rosneft has expanded to an additional floor of its office tower and added staff. The Russian firm has poached PDVSA professionals and brought in more Russian executives, two sources close to Rosneft told Reuters.

The corporate expansion provides a striking contrast to the scene on the streets below these days, in the once-thriving business district of Caracas.

As Rosneft staffers work in swanky offices alongside posters of Russian President Vladimir Putin and a bust of Hugo Chavez - the late Venezuelan leader and socialist icon - crowds of young men outside often throw rocks and Molotov cocktails in escalating protests of Chavez’ successor.

Rosneft currently owns substantial portions of five major Venezuelan oil projects. The additional projects PDVSA is now offering the Russian firm include five in the Orinoco - Venezuela’s largest oil producing region – along with three in Maracaibo Lake, its second-largest and oldest producing area, and a shallow-water oil project in the Paria Gulf, the two industry sources told Reuters.

In a separate proposal first reported by Reuters last month, Rosneft would swap its collateral on 49.9 percent of Citgo [PDVSAC.UL] – the Venezuelan owned, U.S.-based refiner – for stakes in three additional PDVSA oil fields, two natural gas fields and a lucrative fuel supply contract, according to two sources with knowledge of the negotiations.

Under the proposal, Rosneft would also take increased management control over all the joint oil projects between the two firms.

Rosneft secured the collateral late last year on a loan of $1.5 billion to PDVSA.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...acas-moscow-snaps-up-oil-assets-idUSKBN1AR14U
 
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