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Depending on source of information, Venezuela carries a debt burden between 150 and 200 billion USD. And that's the first problem: nobody knows with exactitude how much it is, given the country stopped publishing accounts well over a decade ago. Nonetheless, U.S. puppet Delcy Rodriguez announced plans to restructure it and tapped none other than old friend Matthieu Pigasse, whose current bio doesn't even mention Venezuela.
On the issue of Greece debt negotiations, Reuters posted ""We have always, consistently, been on the governments' side," said Pigasse, explaining Lazard has categorically refused jobs to advise creditors on the other side of the fence".
Quite right, Monsieur Pigasse has always been on chavismo's side. He hails from the Chavez days, worked with Maduro, worked with Rafael Ramirez, worked with PDVSA, and has been involved in some of the most opaque and corrupt deals that have surfaced.
When following expropriations Chavez wanted (without success) to offload PDVSA's international assets, namely Hovensa and CITGO, to prevent suing parties like Conoco from seizing them, who did he call?
Let's bring Alejandro Betancourt's foray into Colombia's Pacific Rubiales. Remember that? Who did the Derwick Associates boys choose in their (failed) hostile takeover?
When chavismo was in full assault médiatique, gagging the press when not imposing hostile takeovers, who took part in forced sale of El Universal involving a selected group of the most corrupt chavista operatives?
When Maduro was thinking about eliminating gasoline subsidies due to its cost to PDVSA and seeking PR advice, did he just settled for disgraced Bell Pottinger? Go and ask Science Po's 'professor' Temir Porras.
And when Rafael Ramirez visited London to assure investors that PDVSA's bonds were a good investment, who organised the gig?
Monsieur Pigasse is in thick with the very best chavismo of all eras has produced. Always keen and consistently on the 'government's' side indeed. Venezuela has produced nice returns for this Parisian-chic and sympa lefty, but nothing like the prospects of restructuring the kind of sums talked about now.
It will be extremely interesting to see the kind of haircut Pigasse proposes to creditors, specially in light of the absolute absence of reliable financial data from both PDVSA and Venezuela's Central Bank. The IMF and the World Bank will have to keep their cards as well, and for the same reason, before any talk of loans can be sensibly entertained.
Despite the completely inane claims of Secretary of State Marco Rubio about Venezuela being in a much better place today than four months ago, the full picture of the economic reality of the country continues to be unknown. There are no trustworthy accounts anywhere. A policy of opaqueness specifically formulated decades ago to avoid accountability cannot be fixed overnight. Nobody inside chavismo has real figures. Nobody knows how much comes in taxes, how much PDVSA sells or brings in, how much there's laying about in sovereign bank accounts, what's the real budget and what's left of it, what will next year budget be... Venezuelan finances are the proverbial blackhole, and have been by design, so that corruption could flourish.
Monsieur Pigasse must be held to the kind of scrutiny applicable to Maduro, Delcy, Diosdado, Ramirez and co. And before arguments that even the worst criminals deserve legal representation, Pigasse has exhibited a knack for swimming with the worse criminals LatAm has produced, i.e. the perfect choice for Delcy, but someone whose involvement will most definitely not benefit Venezuela.
