Billions of assets belonging to Venezuela and Libya continue to be illegally kept in British banks, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova wrote in her Telegram channel
Zakharova drew attention to the news that the ownership of Venezuela’s gold worth almost $1 billion, stored in a London bank, will be defended by lawyers representing the country’s opposition leader Juan Guaido. At the same time, the foreign ministry spokeswoman noted, shortly before, London had reiterated its recognition of Guaido as “the sole president of Venezuela”.
“If we were talking about a detective series, this “coincidence” of events would be described as “pre-planned actions by the persons in question with the aim of criminal collusion in self-interest. Clearly, we are talking about a lot of money, and even more so in gold equivalent”, – the politician said.
Zakharova stressed that the real litigant was the Central Bank of Venezuela, which had taken the initiative to return the gold, which represented around 15 per cent of the country’s foreign currency reserves, to finance the fight against the coronavirus. The diplomat noted that the British government does not care at all that Caracas needs the money to fight the coronavirus. London needs it more.
As Zakharova pointed out, British banks also held funds belonging to Muammar Gaddafi and his family.
“According to UN Security Council Resolution 1973 of 17 March 2011, funds belonging to Gaddafi’s family and inner circle were frozen in banks outside Libya. Then Muammar Gaddafi was killed, and what became of the accounts of the former leader of <…> Libya is unknown”, – she said.
She added that, according to media reports, more than £12bn had been frozen in the UK, originally intended to be used for the post-conflict reconstruction of the North African country, but so far the money has not reached ordinary Libyans.
According to Zakharova, Britain is considering the option of partially unfreezing these funds and handing them over to the families affected by the attacks.
“But these are all words. The truth is that billions of other people’s dollars remain illegally in British banks”, – she concluded.