Stock certificates representing a 49.9% stake in Citgo Holding Inc. have been recovered by PDV Holding Inc. from Rosneft Trading, an arm of Russia’s Rosneft.

PDV Holding, a subsidiary of Venezuela’s state-owned Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), is indirectly the sole stockholder of Citgo.

“This event brings to a close years of effort to recover the certificate of the shares, which had been pledged in violation of Venezuelan law by PDV Holding and PDVSA officials appointed during the Nicolas Maduro regime for a $1.5 billion "prepayment" loan to PDV Holding's sister company PDVSA Petróleo, S.A. in 2016,” PDV said June 26 in a press release.

“Under the prepayment agreement, PDVSA Petróleo was required to repay the loan with shipments of crude oil to Rosneft Trading over a period of four years,” PDV said.

In May 2023, the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) issued a license to PDV Holding authorizing the transfer of the stock certificate and the termination of Rosneft Trading's lien.

“Shortly thereafter, Rosneft Trading agreed to return the certificate, which was being held in escrow in New York. The stock certificate was recovered on June 21 and is now in the possession of PDV Holding at its corporate headquarters in Houston, Texas,” PDV said in the release.

Houston-based Citgo owns and operates three refineries located in Lake Charles, Louisiana, Corpus Christi, Texas, and Lemont, Illinois, with a refining capacity of 807,000 bbl/d. Citgo also owns 30 active refined product terminals with a storage capacity of 7.8 MMbbl and has equity ownership of an additional 3.5 MMbbl of refined product storage capacity through its joint ownership in eight terminals spread across 21 states.

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