Published at: 22/05/2024 09:00 PM

• PDVSA said, at the time, that it was good business to buy half of the CITGO refinery, owned by the Southland Corporation, at an 85% premium.
• PDVSA paid 300 million U$D to acquire half of CITGO, a company that, shortly before, had been acquired in its entirety for 250 million U$D.
• In the Sunday edition of March 16, 1986, John Thompson, owner of CITGO, bragged about how he stole from Venezuela by selling half of his refinery to it for a surcharge of 185 million U$D.
• A few months earlier, the American businessman had bought the entirety of it (100%) for less than half of what PDVSA paid him.
• The directors of PDVSA, citing confidentiality clauses, limited themselves to declaring that the transaction was “a good deal”.
• This occurred during the adeco government of Jaime Lusinchi (1984-1989), when PDVSA had become a State within the State. A kind of Pandora's armored box that didn't share, even with Miraflores, information about the transactions they were secretly setting up with North American businessmen.
• For almost 100 years in the oil industry, weak laws, derisory taxes, bribes, exorbitant compensation, perks to transnational corporations and the legacy of foreign corporations were part of the history of confidentiality that operated inside that black box.

Mazo News Team