By NAN Latin America News Editor | NewsAmericasNow.com
News Americas, CARACAS, Venezuela, Fri. July 10, 2026: Venezuela’s interim President Delcy Rodríguez says she has written to King Charles III, asking Britain to release roughly 30 tonnes of Venezuelan gold that has been frozen in the Bank of England’s vaults since 2019.
“That gold belongs to our people and should be used to address the terrible and tragic consequences caused by the twin earthquakes,” Rodríguez said on state television on July 8th.
It is the second blocked pot of Venezuelan money she has gone after this week. The day before, she called International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva to press for the release of $5.1 billion in Venezuelan Special Drawing Rights, frozen at the Fund since 2019. Only $200 million of that has so far been made available.
Neither request mentions the largest sum still sitting outside Venezuela’s control: the estimated $8 billion in oil export revenue the United States has held since removing Nicolás Maduro from power in January. The US has given $300 million only to Venezuela to date.
The Toll That Keeps Climbing
The confirmed death toll from the June 24 twin earthquakes – magnitude 7.2 and 7.5, striking the north-central coast just 39 seconds apart – has reached 3,811, more than doubling in the past two weeks and still rising. Nearly 17,000 people have been injured, and almost 18,000 have lost their homes. More than 600 aftershocks have followed. The chances of finding further survivors beneath the rubble are now considered very low, and relief efforts have shifted to delivering water, food and medicine to families still searching for their dead with their bare hands.
The United Nations puts the direct physical damage at $37 billion – $24 billion in buildings, $13 billion in infrastructure. Its humanitarian appeal has raised $300 million against a stated shortfall of $627 million.
Three Pots Of Money, One Country Locked Out Of All Of Them
The gold – Roughly 30 tonnes have sat in the Bank of England since 2019, frozen under UK sanctions. Its value has risen sharply with bullion prices — worth about $1.95 billion in 2020, an estimated $3.6 billion by January 2026, and reportedly more than $4 billion today. Britain has declined to recognize the Rodríguez government, and a 2021 UK Supreme Court ruling ties asset access to diplomatic recognition rather than to who is actually governing the country or what its people need. Even at the higher valuation, the gold covers roughly 10 percent of the UN’s $37 billion damage estimate — but it would cover the emergency relief shortfall nearly six times over.
The IMF funds – Venezuela holds about $5.1 billion in IMF Special Drawing Rights, frozen since the Fund declined to recognize Maduro as president in 2019. The IMF resumed contact with Caracas in April and says it is ready to discuss how it can support recovery – but Venezuelan officials say only $200 million has actually moved.
The oil revenue. As this outlet has reported, the United States has controlled Venezuela’s oil exports since the January intervention that removed Maduro – an estimated $8 billion in revenue in the first four months alone, with no public accounting of how much has been collected, spent, or where it currently sits. Washington’s only earthquake-specific concession has been a time-limited license permitting relief-related transactions; broader sanctions, and US control of the oil accounts, remain fully in place.
Add them together and roughly $15 to $17 billion in Venezuelan-linked assets sit frozen or controlled across London, Washington and the IMF’s Washington headquarters – against a $37 billion reconstruction bill and a death toll still climbing past 3,800.
An Unusual Alignment
The politics here cut in an unusual direction. The Trump administration, which backs Rodríguez and has been steadily easing the sanctions it controls, has taken a more flexible position than Britain, which has refused to budge. UK Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper told Parliament in January that recognition – and by extension the gold – would stay withheld until Venezuela completes a democratic transition.
That leaves a government Washington supports being denied its own reserves by a British legal doctrine built to punish the government Washington itself removed. And it leaves the single largest pot of contested money – the oil revenue under direct US control – as the one drawing the least public scrutiny of the three.
Rodríguez, for her part, renewed her broader call this week for sanctions relief generally, telling Venezuelan state television: “Venezuela has resources with which to recover and with which to rise.” UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher has separately said sanctions should be eased so they don’t obstruct the earthquake response.
The Question Nobody In Power Is Answering
Three governments and one international institution. Three separate pots of Venezuelan money. Thousands of families still without homes and living in makeshift tents, and a death toll that has nearly doubled in two weeks with no sign of stopping.
Britain can point to a court ruling. The IMF can point to a slow-moving review process. But the United States, holding the largest sum of all and facing none of the same institutional excuse, has offered no public accounting of what it has collected in Venezuelan oil revenue or where that money currently sits.
During a visit on Tuesday, July 7th, in hard-hit La Guaira amid the sounds and sporadic silences of bulldozers and rescuers digging through rubble, UN relief chief Tom Fletcher recalled meeting a group of mothers who returned to the site daily with hopes that their children would be found.
“Those mothers asked me last night ‘is help coming?’” the UN Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator said.
If releasing frozen gold and IMF reserves is now, rightly, a matter of urgent public pressure, the same standard should apply to the $8 billion sitting in accounts the US controls. The people burying their dead in La Guaira are not asking whose flag is on the vault. They are asking where the money is.
