By Chris Menahan – Information Liberation
The US sanctioned Venezuelan state-owned oil company Citgo into bankruptcy, forced its sale to Zionist billionaire Paul Singer for about $6 billion two months ago, and then captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to “take over” the country.
This comes after the US banned TikTok and forced its sale to a consortium of investors led by Zionist billionaire Larry Ellison.
For [Paul Singer’s] activist hedge fund Elliott Investment Management, Nicolás Maduro’s swift exit comes at an auspicious time.
A U.S. judge in November backed a roughly $6 billion bid by Elliott for Citgo Petroleum, the refining firm owned by Venezuela’s state-run company Petróleos de Venezuela, known as PdVSA, in a forced sale to satisfy creditors. Citgo, based in Houston, owns a U.S. network of refineries, pipelines and terminals that some analysts have said could be worth between $11 billion and $13 billion.
The deal was controversial in Venezuela. Maduro’s government denounced the proposed sale as fraudulent. The board recognized by the U.S. government as the legitimate overseer of PdVSA’s overseas oil assets vowed to fight to keep Citgo under Venezuelan control.
Less than two months after receiving the judge’s endorsement, Elliott is looking at a more favorable—albeit chaotic—landscape. Maduro is being held in a New York jail. President Trump has sidelined the opposition, accused Venezuela of stealing American crude and said U.S. firms would be strongly involved in its oil industry.
Now, Elliott appears poised to reap the rewards of owning Venezuela’s most valuable foreign oil asset. The regime change could lead to an increase in Venezuelan oil production, which would likely provide cheap feedstock to Citgo’s Gulf Coast refineries and increase the company’s value, analysts and refining experts said.
“Maduro is out, so a lot of the threat is out,” said Jay Auslander, a litigator who represents sovereign interests and private-equity funds. “It looks like a potentially quite good deal that remains high risk.”
Elliott isn’t in the clear yet. The hedge fund still needs approval from the Treasury Department to conclude the deal. Plus, PdVSA and Venezuela have appealed the judicial sale.
Rep. Thomas Massie raised this issue on Sunday.
“In 2024, Singer, an 81-year-old with a net worth of $6.7 billion, donated $5 million to Make America Great Again Inc., Trump’s Super PAC. Singer donated tens of millions more in the 2024 cycle to support Trump’s allies, including $37 million to support the election of Republicans to Congress. He also donated an undisclosed amount to fund Trump’s second transition,” Judd Legum reports.
Singer’s $5.89 billion bid wasn’t even the highest bid, MarketWatch reports:
The forced auction was a lengthy process that pitted Amber Energy against one other contender, Gold Reserves Ltd., a creditor of Venezuela that had its gold- and copper-mining assets expropriated. The winning bid from the Elliott Management affiliate came in at $5.89 billion, lower than the $7 billion bid from Gold Reserves, but a federal judge in Delaware viewed Elliott’s bid as most likely to close, as it included payments to Venezuela’s creditors.
The deal is expected to close this year, lawyers involved in the situation have said.
The Ellison group’s bid for TikTok wasn’t the highest bid either, though his group seems to have won anyway.
The Wall Street Journal noted how Singer made billions in the past by buying worthless debt from Argentina and then successfully lobbying the US to force them to pay:
Elliott has a history of clinching lucrative deals in risky locales. After Argentina defaulted on its sovereign debt in 2001, most foreign bondholders settled for pennies on the dollar, but Elliott held firm. The hedge fund spent tens of millions of dollars on a legal, lobbying and PR blitz around the world to make the country pay. The efforts eventually led to a $2 billion payday.
If this was the real driving force behind the US’s regime change operation, it wouldn’t be the first time.