Venezuela: Arbitration sought in fight for seized cash

[Imperialism Inc.]

What is interesting about this is the company that the dispute is with was big player in the Venezuelan strike and headed by numerous former US military players. So apparently there is nothing wrong with foreign investors helping to shut down an economy if they don't like the leader of the country.

Venezuela: Arbitration sought in fight for seized cash
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/business/international/latin_america/9220134.htm

Petróleos de Venezuela called for international arbitration to settle a dispute that led the U.S. government to rule the state oil company improperly seized the investments of its American partner.

Caracas-based Petróleos is willing to go to arbitration to settle differences with San Diego-based Science Applications International, Rodolfo Porro, the oil company's legal counsel, said in a statement.

A spokesman for the U.S. Overseas Private Investment Corp., Larry Spinelli, said the offer came too late because the agency already paid Science Applications' claim, effectively taking its place in the impasse. The agency provides U.S. businesses with risk insurance and financing.

The dispute over the two companies' Informática, Negocios y Tecnología SA venture threatens to derail new investment by U.S. companies in the South American country. OPIC is unlikely to support new projects in Venezuela until the disagreement is resolved, Spinelli said this month.

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The dictator-in-the-making meets the democrat
http://blog.zmag.org/killingtrain/archives/000868.html#more

(snip)
For your first example, a recent Wall Street Journal article (pointed out to me by fellow killingtrain blogger CP Pandya and reproduced in full below) says that the Overseas Private Investment Corporation is going to make it extra difficult for companies to invest in Venezuela, exacerbating capital flight and harming the economy. Why? This is rich. Because Venezuela apparently illegally expropriated assets belonging to Science Applications International Corporation. If you are doing a double-take at the name of the company, that's probably because you know what Hector Mondragon pointed out about this set of gangsters last year. A quote from that article:

"But the real strength of the strike in Venezuela has been in the computers that control the giant and highly automated petroleum industry. Even though the PDV is nominally state-owned and run, the computer system is in the hands of the 'mixed' (public-private) enterprise Intesa. The party with the technical skill in the partnership is the Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC)-a transnational computing company. Among its directors: ex-US Secretaries of Defense William Perry and Melvin Laird; ex-directors of the CIA John Deutsch, Robert Gates; Admiral Bobby Ray Inman (ex-director of the National Security Agency); other retired military staff including Wayne Downing (former commander in chief of US Special Forces) and Jasper Welch (ex-coordinator of the National Security Council).

"The hold-up of the oil-tankers was directed from these computing centers. The hold-up was welcomed by various captains, but the tankers were forced to shore in any case: nothing moves without direction from the computers, which also stopped key operations in the refineries and the entry of vital gas for the iron and steel industries of eastern Venezuela. 'Lungos' from Guayana had to recover the gas."

A lot of this is actually in the mainstream coverage, though the idea that these companies might have done something wrong by locking out local workers, trying to shut down an economy, and imposing massive suffering on a population in order to force a government that they don't like (precisely because it is trying to alleviate the suffering of that population) out of power doesn't seem to get across in these articles. If it did, perhaps that would make it more difficult for the same companies to be doing the exact same thing right now.
(more)

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On a different subject but also in blog entry above is this interesting statement from Uribe of Colombia on his negotiations with Chavez for a pipeline through Colombia.

Uribe: "I don't want the tanks any more; I hope that with the government of President Zapatero we can make a deal where, instead of selling us these tanks, they can sell us something more useful."

[ret5hd]

1. someone remind me of SAIC's role in BBV...

maybe their interest in deciding governments isn't limited to the southern hemisphere.