Revisiting the opposition’s debt restructuring guidelines

On July 3, 2019, the opposition-appointed Office of the Special Attorney General of Venezuela published a document outlining the principles for the country’s eventual debt restructuring. On March 23, 2023, Delaware District Court Judge Leonard Stark cited this document as proof of the lack of appropriate separation between the management of the country’s oil industry and the interim government, serving as the basis for the decision to allow Venezuela creditors to seek orders to attach CITGO. In this post I reproduce the comments that I published just after the publication of the opposition’s guidelines, arguing that the promise to give different creditors of the Venezuelan state equal treatment was highly problematic and could cause legal problems down the road.