The briefing for Venezuelan restructuring.
The United States is due today to give the Third Circuit its views on shelving the Citgo appeal. The Fund's October outlook raises Venezuelan growth to 5 percent this year and 7 percent in 2027, and Bloomberg reports that Jaime Gilinski has agreed to pass his Bare field contract to GeoPark for shares first valued at USD 515 million.
An ad hoc group of bondholders including GMO and T. Rowe Price now holds at least USD 22 billion, about 37 percent of Venezuela's outstanding bonds, and expects 40 percent within weeks. The Secretary of State received Dinorah Figuera, and the third round of the table, opening 14 October, puts the gold held in the United Kingdom on the agenda.
Venezuela has asked the Third Circuit to hold its Citgo appeal in abeyance while it pursues repayment of the Delaware creditors, and the court has given the United States until 13 October to state its views. Judge Hellerstein refused the Flores release application and a superseding indictment adds a torture count; the Secretary of State receives Dinorah Figuera this morning.
The government's financial adviser is to present within days a reference document for the restructuring, with official figures putting the debt near USD 238 billion, about USD 40 billion of it owed among Venezuelan public entities on one economist's count. The Fund will print some Venezuelan official data in the World Economic Outlook on 13 October.
A gas line rupture shut every plant at the Cardon refinery, and PDVSA, unusually, blamed nobody. In Geneva the Human Rights Council renewed the fact-finding mission to September 2028 with its widest support since 2019, and the Assembly confirmed an ambassador to Lisbon whose brief includes about USD 1.5 billion at Novo Banco.
The full text of Friday's opposition brief carries a chronology this desk had not printed: on 14 May the Venezuelan Embassy in Washington asked the State Department for head-of-state immunity for the interim president in a Florida civil case, and the United States filed a suggestion of immunity on 20 July. Venezuela has asserted immunity for neither Maduro nor Flores in any proceeding.
The Justice Department told the Southern District that Maduro and Flores are former rogue officials of a formerly rogue state with no immunity, and that the President's recognition decisions are entitled to absolute deference. Caracas closed the Branker and San Miguel cases; September exports fell to 1.08 million barrels a day.
The President told Time that Venezuela will have elections but that it is too soon to hold them, setting the oil companies and the money first; in Caracas the call for Judicial Nominations Committee candidates was published on schedule.
Figuera told Venevision that November remains the target for designating all thirty-two Supreme Tribunal magistrates, with the electoral council in December and no presidential election date; Tal Cual reported the acquittal of journalists Luis Lopez and Gabriel Gonzalez.
Treasury designated ten Tren de Aragua targets under the terrorism and criminal-organisation orders rather than the Venezuela programme, while in Caracas the Preliminary Commission published the first dated calendar for renewing the Supreme Tribunal.