Cuban president calls Venezuela's gold withholding robbery

Havana, July 3 (RHC)-- Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel called the Bank of England's seizure of Venezuelan gold a robbery in an attempt to prop up opposition leader Juan Guaidó.

"As in the times of (Francis) Drake and (Henry) Morgan, gold is their business and nothing more," Nicolas Guillen's verses about the U.S. Marines say, Diaz-Canel wrote on his Twitter social network account.

"Nothing better to describe the brazen theft of Venezuelan gold to prop up the Empire's puppet," added the president with the tags #ManosFueraDeVenezuela, #SomosCuba and #SomosContinuidad.

Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodriguez denounced the day before that the organization led by Guaidó intends to appropriate the Venezuelans' gold deposited as international reserves in the United Kingdom.

"Today a British judge made an extravagant decision on the recognition of the hallucinating Guaidó as the supposed head of state of the South American country," said the vice president.

In a statement, the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry said that the Central Bank of Venezuela (BCV) would immediately appeal this decision, which it described as an act of piracy that threatens the right to health and life of the people by depriving them of the resources needed to combat the COVID-19 pandemic.

The case reached the British courts after the Bank of England refused to hand over to its Venezuelan counterpart the equivalent of one billion dollars in gold from the reserves it holds in its London vaults.

BCV officials explained that the funds would be given to the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), which would manage the purchase of medical supplies, food and medicines to combat the disease, caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus.