A television channel closed due to the pressure of sanctions returns to Venezuela thanks to an investment fund

DirectTV antennas in the Catia neighborhood, last May.MANAURE QUINTERO / Reuters

After announcing his abrupt withdrawal citing difficulties related to compliance with the US sanctions against Venezuela, Directv has reported his return to the country. It is a reality that is possible thanks to the entry into play of the investment company Scale Capital, which has decided to buy the Directv Venezuela operation, owned by the multinational AT&T, and has agreed with the government of Nicolás Maduro the terms of the return of the pay television service. The decision impacts 10 million people who had been without service since May.

Scale Capital is an investment and business management fund made up of some managers and former directors of Directv in Venezuela and the region, with a portfolio that includes technology companies that handle electronic payment systems, cloud data storage and streaming, of according to its concise website. It has operations in Miami, London and Santiago de Chile. The negotiation of this company with the Venezuelan government has now annulled the expropriation measure of Directv Venezuela's assets that took place after the departure of AT&T.

The National Telecommunications Commission, Conatel, issued a statement in which it states: “We report that Directv, through the company Scale Capital, restored the television signal by subscription. Said restitution complies with the legal provisions of the Supreme Court of Justice for the protection of its users ”. Maduro has also referred to the matter and thanked the president of Conatel and also Minister of the Office of the Presidency, Jorge Eliéser Márquez, on whom Washington sanctions weigh. "An agreement was reached with the private company that will manage Directv's public service, under the regulations of Venezuelan laws," he said. "It is very unfortunate that there is conspiring against Venezuela", in reference to the output of the signal, which Chavismo interpreted as a direct measure by the United States against the Venezuelan government.

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The cable company will offer a three-month grace period of free service to its users. It is expected that then the price of the tariffs, subsidized for years due to an official imposition, will have international prices. But the point of contention that forced the output of the signal from the televisions of more than 2 million homes was the impossibility, according to Venezuelan law, of removing the Globovisión and PDVSA TV channels from their programming grid, both owned by individuals and companies sanctioned by the Treasury for their links to corruption associated with the Maduro government. After the announcements, the signal has gradually begun to be restored in the devices and in the service grid, for the moment, these two channels do not appear.

"The agreement allows to provide immediate service to more than 2 million families that were subscribers of DirecTV Venezuela," underlined the company, which will appoint Alexander Elorriaga as executive president of the company, who in the past has already led the subsidiary of the American company in the country. Jacopo Bracco, CEO of Scale Capital, said he was very excited about this agreement and thanked all parties for their support: "In particular the government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and the National Telecommunications Commission (Conatel)."

The agreement that makes possible the reactivation of Directv's cable television service - which accounts for half of the nation's user pie - would include the release of the three Directv Venezuela managers who were taken to prison in May, when AT&T announced the abrupt end of its operations in the country. Although the release tickets for the three were issued, the measure has not materialized.

Directv Venezuela's cessation of operations was a fragmentary grenade in the minds of millions of Venezuelans, burdened by a terrible political and economic crisis, with the added complications of the pandemic. In recent weeks, sectors of the Venezuelan opposition have been speculating about the possible activation of a political initiative to collect signatures and ask AT&T to cancel the measure. Juan Guaidó himself made several allusions to this possibility. He was heavily criticized, presumably for making impossible propositions that triggered vain hopes. The return of Directv to Venezuela seems to realize a small miracle of political negotiation. Maduro has given in to allow the transmission of the signal, even with the official channels off the grid, and Juan Guaidó has tried to exploit the circumstance.

Guaidó's office issued a statement in which it affirmed that the Directv signal "has returned without the channels sanctioned for corruption," alluding to PDVSA TV and Globovisión. "This shows that it was the dictator Nicolás Maduro who was responsible for Directv's march, and today they are the ones who must accept the return of the signal without the sanctioned channels linked to acts of international corruption," adds the statement from the interim presidency .