Seven years after a London court froze Venezuela out of its own gold, the standoff may be closer to breaking than at any point since — just not in the direction most people expected. The Financial Times reported Friday that Caracas's interim government and parts of the opposition are negotiating a mechanism to pull the bullion out of the Bank of England's vaults. The destination isn't Caracas. It's Manhattan.
The arrangement the British paper described falls well short of repatriation or a sale. Rodríguez would win legal title to the 31 tons, but the metal would stay off the market for now. Instead, it could underpin state borrowing, including money for rebuilding what June's earthquakes tore apart. An opposition figure with direct knowledge of the talks put the caveat plainly to the Financial Times, describing Rodríguez's eventual access to the gold once it sits on American soil as something that "will be supervised and restricted."
