Crystallex International Corporation v Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela - Petroleos De Venezuela SA - United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit - No 18-2889 - Opinion of The Court - 29 July 2019
Country
Year
2019
Summary
On Petition for Writ of Mandamus from the United States District Court for the District of Delaware (Related to D.C. Civil Action No. 1-17-mc-00151)
Crystallex International Corp., a Canadian gold mining company, invested hundreds of millions of dollars to develop gold deposits in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. In 2011, Venezuela expropriated those deposits and transferred them to its state-owned oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. ("PDVSA"). To seek redress, Crystallex invoked a bilateral investment treaty between Canada and Venezuela to file for arbitration before the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes. The arbitration took place in Washington, D.C., and Crystallex won; the arbitration panel awarded it $1.2 billion plus interest for Venezuela's expropriation of its investment. The United States District Court for the District of Columbia confirmed that award and issued a $1.4 billion federal judgment. Now Crystallex is trying to collect.
Unable to identify Venezuelan-held commercial assets in the United States that it can lawfully seize, Crystallex went after U.S.-based assets of PDVSA. Specifically, it sought to attach PDVSA's shares in Petróleos de Venezuela Holding, Inc. ("PDVH"), its wholly owned U.S. subsidiary. PDVH is the holding company for CITGO Holding, Inc., which in turn owns CITGO Petroleum Corp. ("CITGO"), a Delaware Corporation headquartered in Texas (though best known for the CITGO sign outside Fenway Park in Boston).
This attachment suit is governed by the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976, 28 U.S.C. §§ 1602-1611 (the "Sovereign Immunities Act"). Under federal common law first recognized by the Supreme Court in First National City Bank v. Banco Para El Comercio Exterior de Cuba ("Bancec"), 462 U.S. 611 (1983), a judgment creditor of a foreign sovereign may look to the sovereign's instrumentality for satisfaction when it is "so extensively controlled by its owner that a relationship of principal and agent is created." Id. at 629.
Interpreting Bancec, the District Court, per Chief Judge Stark, concluded that Venezuela's control over PDVSA was sufficient to allow Crystallex to attach PDVSA's shares of PDVH in satisfaction of its judgment against the country. PDVSA and Venezuela, along with PDVSA's third-party bondholders as amici (the "Bondholders"), challenge this ruling.
Venezuela and the Bondholders do not substantially contest the District Court's finding that it extensively controlled PDVSA. Rather, they raise various jurisdictional and equitable objections to the attachment. Likewise, PDVSA primarily contends that its tangential role in the dispute precludes execution against its assets under Bancec irrespective of the control Venezuela exerts over it.
We affirm the District Court's order granting the writ of attachment and remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.