Chavez threatens to nationalize Venezuela banks

http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=425910&CategoryId=10717&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+LatinAmericanHeraldTribune+%28Latin+American+Herald+Tribune%29

With Bolivia President Evo Morales by his side and before dashing off to Cuba for a fourth round of chemotherapy, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez again threatened the country’s banks with expropriation if they didn’t loosen up lending, saying that he had to “meterle el ojo” (“keep an eye on them”).

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Saturday again threatened to nationalize the country’s private banks, arguing that they are not financing families seeking to buy a house.

“We really need to keep an eye on private banks,” said Chavez. “I do not have any problem nationalizing them, or expropiating them. We will not accept that banks continue to joke around with people who do not have a home.”

Chavez made the threat Saturday afternoon during a televised cabinet meeting and visit by Bolivian President Evo Morales, before heading to Cuba for a fourth round of chemotherapy to treat a still undisclosed cancer in an unspecified part of his body. In June, Chavez said he had a “baseball-sized” tumor removed in Cuba.

Last week, the Venezuelan government expropriated 15,000 hectares of land that Irish paper and packaging company Smurfit used to grow eucalyptus and pine trees. Venezuelan industry confederation Conindustria says that the government has already nationalized over 400 companies in 2011.

Venezuela’s new Solicitor General Carlos Escarra says that Venezuela has 26 compensation disputes pending at the World Bank’s International Center for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) in Washington, D.C. for expropriated and nationalized assets. Experts put the total potential compensation liabilities at over $40 billion. Venezuelan government officials have lately begun speaking of withdrawing from ICSID jurisdiction.

————-

hugo is just taking whatever he wants..sovereign risk in venezuela would be sky high..mind you..there might not be much left to nationalise..

401

Advertisement

~ by seeker401 on September 23, 2011.