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Case No. VENEZUELA-EO13850-2020-366869-1
Adam M. Smith
Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP
1050 Connecticut Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20036
Dear Mr. Smith:
This letter responds to your request, on behalf of Crystallex International Corporation (Crystallex), dated April 9, 2020, and subsequent related correspondence, to the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), requesting authorization for all activities necessary and ordinarily incident to organizing and conducting a judicial sale of shares in CITGO Petroleum Corp.’s (CITGO) indirect parent holding company, PDV Holding, Inc. (PDVH), that are held by Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PdVSA).
Absent a license from OFAC, any sale of the PDVH shares is prohibited pursuant to OFAC’s Venezuela-related sanctions authorities, including Executive Order (E.O) 13808 of August 24, 2017, “Imposing Additional Sanctions with Respect to the Situation in Venezuela” (as amended by E.O. 13857 of January 25, 2019, “Taking Additional Steps To Address the National...
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1) Background:
For detailed commentary concerning the context of the license application and broader litigation to which this letter relates, see Consolidated Comment on Crystallex International Corporation v. Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela (D. Del, 2017 - ) (the “Crystallex Comment”).
Relative to all other OFAC license request denial letters that we have on file, this letter is one of a kind in terms of OFAC’s willingness to actually address the applicant’s arguments on their merits and provide details concerning the underlying policy rationale. There is a substantial probability that the motivating reason for the relative verbosity was a concern that a thin response would be the subject of an “arbitrary and capricious” APA-based lawsuit (compare generally Consolidated Comment on US VC Partners GP LLC et al. v. OFAC, and Selected Documents Associated with...