Venezuela forced CITGO into insolvency to avoid liability, says claim

After nationalizing one of the world’s largest untapped gold reserves, Venezuela forced Citgo into insolvency to avoid multibillion-dollar liability, a Canadian mining company claims in court.
Located in the southeast Venezuela, near a town appropriately christened El Dorado, Las Cristinas is Venezuela’s largest unmined gold reserve.
In a federal complaint filed Monday, Toronto-based Crystallex International says “extensive on-site studies have concluded that Las Cristinas contains proven and probable reserves of almost 17 million ounces of unmined gold, with indications of at least another 9 million available ounces.”
Crystallex says it spent more than $640 million on infrastructure in the area after contracting 13 years ago with the state-run Corporacion Venezolana de Guayana, but that the actual mining never got off the ground. Read Article