The Venezuelan government and the opposition agree to unfreeze 5 billion state funds abroad

The Venezuelan government and the opposition will begin to negotiate this weekend in Mexico with several agreements that they have reached in previous talks that now only have to be endorsed.

The most important of these is the willingness of both parties to unfreeze state funds abroad with the help of the United States, which should give banks, investment funds and credit institutions confidence to release a huge amount of money. of Venezuelan origin.

A part of that capital will be used to finance the Chavista government and another will go to a humanitarian aid fund managed by the UN.

"This is going to be signed and we trust that this money will begin to circulate shortly," they comment from within the negotiation.

The Bank of England has retained 31 tons of gold bars from Venezuela and the same is true of some accounts of the Central Bank of Venezuela in the United States.

The Chavista government —calculates that they have 5,000 million dollars frozen abroad—, urgently needed for financing, has conditioned its presence in Mexico on the relaxation of international sanctions.

Shortly, Washington will also announce that Chevron will receive several licenses to exploit oil in the country, which will mean relief for the local economy.

Recovering its energy strength, something that also favors Washington due to its confrontation with Russia, is another of its objectives in Mexico.

The parties will sit down to negotiate this weekend and will probably do so again at the beginning of 2023. There is an express wish that not a long time elapses between one dialogue and another.

As Chavismo and the opposition meet, they will make the agreement public, without waiting for a final document in which everything is revealed.

The ultimate goal is for the Venezuelan electoral institute to organize clean elections verified by the international community in which either of the two options can win.

The opposition has agreed to present a single candidate to challenge Maduro for the presidency, a name that will emerge from primaries to be held next year.

The announcement that the negotiations were reestablished was made by Petro, who has gained a lot of prominence on this issue since he took office in August.

The reality is that the scoop that he sent through social networks annoyed the negotiators.

They remember that there are many presidents and prime ministers who want to show themselves as leaders in this rapprochement, but that the architecture of the dialogues is clear.

On the one hand, there is Chavismo, on the other the unitary platform of Venezuela —the opposition—, and in the middle a facilitating country, Norway.

Russia and the Netherlands act as escorts.

Petro, Emmanuel Macron, Alberto Fernández and Pedro Sánchez play an important role in supporting the negotiation path to end the crisis in Venezuela, but they are not part of the process, these same sources insist.

The Chavista government had given signs that its priority at this time is to unfreeze funds abroad.

In a statement signed by the head of the negotiators, Jorge Rodríguez —Maduro's right-hand man, the government's key man—, it was said that it is necessary to recover "legitimate resources, property of the State of Venezuela, which today are blocked in the system international finance.

"This agreement," reads the letter, "expresses the advancement of the right of our people to enjoy their illegally and unfairly blocked assets and resources."

Next, it was stated that this money will go to reinforce the health system, infrastructure, vaccines and medicines.

With the parties sitting at the same table, dialogue no longer seems impossible.

The international community has pushed in recent months for it to be so.

Chavismo has sent Jorge Rodríguez as the main bulwark, but also a son of Maduro, who has the same name, and Camila Fabri, the wife of Álex Saab, the Colombian businessman accused by the US of being a figurehead for Maduro.

Her presence at the talks clearly shows that at some point the government will demand the release of Saab, imprisoned in Miami.

But those matters are yet to be discussed.

What is a fact is that the absolute priority has been to recover the money abroad, and for the moment it has been achieved.

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