Venezuela

nation state

Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela  link Sourcewatch Wikiquote
Location	South America
Leader	President of Venezuela
Type	nation state
Venezuela possesses the world's largest oil reserves

Venezuela, officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and a large number of small islands and islets in the Caribbean Sea. The capital and largest urban agglomeration is the city of Caracas. It has a territorial extension of 916,445 km² (353,841 sq mi). The continental territory is bordered on the north by the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Colombia, Brazil on the south, Trinidad and Tobago to the north-east and on the east by Guyana.

Fossil fuel reserves

Counting tar sands, Venezuela has the largest oil reserves of any nation state. Venezuela has the 8th largest gas reserves of any nation state, about 3% of total global reserves.

In March 2015 the administration of Barack Obama, at the urging of US oil corporations, declared Venezuela to be a “threat to the national security” of the US.

Venezuelan coups

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Max Blumenthal on two decades of US war on Venezuela - The Grayzone YT channel - Nov 4, 2025

The country has had a number of coups in the 20^th century. Beginning in 1998 the US has intensified it's efforts to get Chavez out of power, it included legislative action, calling Venezuela an: "unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States" in 2015, support for local officers that would move against Maduro and covert action.

Thatcher encouraged Chávez coup

In 2002, a foreign-backed attempted coup failed to depose Hugo Chavez after a mass display of popular support.

In the context of the failed coup in Equatorial Guinea in 2004, former British PM Margaret Thatcher was said to have asked whether Simon Mann had yet met a group, led by a man called "Sanchos", who were seeking to remove Hugo Chávez from Venezuela. Mann wrote:

"No – I hadn't: but, Mark says, we are seeing him next day, in Eaton Place, just next door." He continues with Mrs Thatcher's reply: "'Good. Well, I hope that goes well too.' She looked at me with her imperial gaze. 'We must always look after our friends, Simon … as I'm sure you know.'"

Mann declined to comment.

2019 Venezuelan blackout

A September 2010 memo by a U.S.-funded organization that helped train Venezuelan coup leader Juan Guaidó and his allies identified the potential collapse of the country’s electrical sector as "a watershed event" that "would likely have the impact of galvanizing public unrest in a way that no opposition group could ever hope to generate." The note was authored by Srdja Popovic of the Center for Applied Non-Violent Action and Strategies (CANVAS), a Belgrade-based "democracy promotion" organization funded by the U.S. that has trained thousands of US-aligned youth activists in countries where the West seeks regime change.

In the 2010 memo, published by WikiLeaks and analyzed by Max Blumenthal, Popovic declared, "A key to Chavez’s current weakness is the decline in the electricity sector." Popovic explicitly identified the Simon Bolivar Hydroelectric Plant as a friction point, emphasizing that "water levels at the Guri dam are dropping, and Chavez has been unable to reduce consumption sufficiently to compensate for the deteriorating industry."

In March 2019, the scenario outlined by Popovic played out almost exactly as written. Starting around 5 PM on March 7, an electricity blackout affected most of Venezuela for several days after an alleged cyber attack crashed the country’s main electricity generator, the Simon Bolivar Hydroelectric Plant (Guri Dam) in Bolivar State. The outage affected 70 percent of the country, including the capital Caracas. Soon after, a second major outage took place as a result of a renewed cyberattack, leading to months of power blackouts.

At noon on March 7, during a hearing on Venezuela at the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee, Senator Marco Rubio explicitly called for the U.S. to stir "widespread unrest," declaring that it "needs to happen" in order to achieve regime change. "Venezuela is going to enter a period of suffering no nation in our hemisphere has confronted in modern history," Rubio proclaimed.

BBC bias and lies

On 8 February 2019, Venezuela Analysis published an article entitled "The BBC and Venezuela: Bias and Lies", which began:

The mass media under capitalism is part of the state machine and uses its influence and “prestige” of being “objective” and “independent” to play an important role in the propaganda element. In the UK, the BBC has perfected its skills in preparing the population to accept that any coup that imperialism supports is justified. And this they have done about Venezuela.

"The BBC programme 'Revolution in Ruins: The Hugo Chavez Story', broadcast on 16 January, sought to prepare viewers to accept and support any moves against President Maduro, as the inheritor of Chavez’s legacy. And within a week, an attempted coup had begun!

Gold reserves

Full article: Gold

In November 2011, President Hugo Chavez ordered the repatriation of 85% of the country's bullion reserves (some 160 tonnes of gold, worth more than $11bn) to protect Venezuela's reserves from global economic turbulence:

"The gold is returning to where it was always meant to be: the vaults of the Central Bank of Venezuela," Mr Chavez said.

Critics suggested that Mr Chavez was acting out of fears that Venezuela's overseas assets could one day be frozen by sanctions, as happened to his friend and ally, the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

Most of Venezuela's foreign gold reserves are held in London.

On 7 February 2019, Ken Livingstone joined protesters to demand that the Bank of England returns the remaining $1.3 billion of Venezuela’s gold. Livingstone said:

"The holding of this gold is part of the UK’s slavish following of Trump’s support for a coup and possible military intervention."

High Court ruling

On 2 July 2020, the UK High Court ruled against Venezuela's government in a legal battle over access to $1bn (£820m) of gold stored in the Bank of England. Judge Nigel Teare said:

"Her Majesty's Government does recognise Mr Guaidó in the capacity of the constitutional interim president of Venezuela and, it must follow, does not recognise Mr Maduro as the constitutional interim president of Venezuela."

Lawyers for the Venezuelan Central Bank, which brought the case, said they would appeal against the judgment.

Appeal allowed

In September 2020, the Maduro Board of the Central Bank of Venezuela successfully appealed to the Court of Appeal:

Question: Does Her Majesty's Government (formally) recognise Juan Guaidó or Nicolás Maduro and, if so, in what capacity, on what basis and from when? Answer: No. While such recognition is conclusive for the purpose of determining who is the de jure President of Venezuela, it leaves open the possibility that HMG may impliedly recognise Mr Maduro as the de facto President of Venezuela.

UK Supreme Court

On 19 July 2021, the Guaidó Board of the Central Bank of Venezuela appealed to the UK Supreme Court.

Independent journalist John McEvoy tweeted:

The proceedings can be viewed live here.

File:UKSC Timetable.jpg

Here's the UK Supreme Court timetable, UKSC ruling expected 22 July

The UK Supreme Court unanimously allowed the appeal of the 'Guaidó Board' appeal in part, holding that the UK Government has recognised Mr Guaidó as interim President of Venezuela and that the act of state doctrine prevents the English courts from adjudicating the legality, under Venezuelan law, of Mr Guaidó’s appointments to the Central Bank of Venezuela. However, the Supreme Court also held that the 'Maduro Board' may rely on judgments of the Venezuelan Supreme Tribunal of Justice (“Venezuelan STJ”) striking down Mr Guaidó’s appointments, if those judgments meet the requirements for recognition by the English courts (whether or not they do was remitted to the Commercial Court). The judgment represents an important development of the act of state doctrine, which will help UK-recognised foreign governments to take control of assets in England and, in the right circumstances, should provide more legal certainty to financial institutions that have commercial dealings with sovereigns and sovereign owned entities.

Foreign influence operations

In January 2021 the Daily Maverick reports on a Foreign Office connected foundation which allocated £750,000 on a ‘democracy-promotion’ program and an allocation of £250,000 to ‘influence’ local and national ‘media agendas’.