Venezuela and UK seek to improve relations despite dispute over gold
Caracas, Aug 30 (EFE).- Venezuela’s Foreign Minister Yván Gil and Britain’s recently appointed charge d’affaires in the South American country, Colin Dick, met in Caracas on Wednesday in an attempt to improve bilateral relations despite a dispute over Venezuela’s $1.95 billion in gold reserves held at the Bank of England.
“This is an opportunity to improve diplomatic relations within the framework of equality and mutual respect,” said Gil on X (formerly Twitter).
Dick, appointed this month to Venezuela, was commissioner for Barbados and the Caribbean between 2013 and 2017, and director in charge of the UK Department for Exiting the European Union between 2017 and 2019.
His arrival in Caracas comes two months after a London Court rejected an appeal by the Maduro-appointed board of the Central Bank of Venezuela (BCV) against a ruling that denied his regime authority over the gold deposited in the Bank of England.
The British Justice then explained that when the former president of the Parliament, Juan Guaidó, appointed the members of his “ad hoc” BCV’s board, the Government of the UK “recognized him as interim president” of the country, as did another fifty or so nations that no longer do so.
The English court ratified that the decisions of the opposition leader, while he was recognized as president by London, must be interpreted by the British Justice as “sovereign acts,” arguments rejected by Maduro’s Executive, which plans to initiate a new lawsuit before the commercial division of the High Court.
The object of this dispute is the access to Venezuelan gold reserves worth some 1,950 million dollars deposited in the Bank of England and an additional 120 million dollars resulting from a swap executed by Deutsche Bank.
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