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The Ley Constitucional Antibloqueo (the "Anti-Blockade Law") was adopted by Venezuela's National Constituent Assembly (ANC) — the supra-constitutional body convened in 2017 that Maduro used to bypass the opposition-controlled Asamblea Nacional — and published in Gaceta Oficial Extraordinaria N° 6.583 on 12 October 2020. It entered into force upon publication and remains in effect until "the effects of the unilateral coercive measures…cease."
Structure: 44 articles across 3 chapters, 2 transitional provisions, and 1 final provision.
Chapter I — General Provisions (Articles 1–8): Establishes purpose (counteract, mitigate, and reduce harmful effects of unilateral coercive measures), definitions, and scope. Qualifies the entire law as "public order and general interest" and declares it applicable to all public and private legal persons throughout Venezuelan national territory.
Chapter II — Measures for Economic and Productive Balance (Articles 9–37):
suspend or derogate (inapplicar) the application of any law of the Republic when the President determines this is necessary to overcome obstacles, threats, or harms resulting from unilateral coercive measures. This is the most sweeping counter-sanctions derogation authority enacted by any Western Hemisphere jurisdiction — it operates as a constitutional override of the ordinary legislative hierarchy.
special-purpose FDI vehicle with extraordinary structural carve-outs: - Negotiates and executes agreements with foreign investors under complete confidentiality (no public disclosure of counterparties, terms, or project documentation required). - May establish foreign-trust structures and asset-protection/relocation mechanisms outside Venezuela to protect investor assets from sanctions reach. - Exempt from Ley de Contrataciones Públicas (public procurement), LOAFSP (national accounting framework), and SIMADI/DICOM FX-control regulations. - Project documentation classified as "reserved" under national security provisions. - Can operate across any productive sector without sector-specific ministerial approvals.
Venezuelan nationals or legal persons that comply with, facilitate, or assist in the enforcement of unilateral coercive measures against Venezuela.
Chapter III — Other Protection Measures (Articles 38–44): Broadens the anti-blockade framework to include retaliatory measures against foreign counterparties, diplomatic notifications, and other sovereign-protection tools.
Article 16 — Observatorio Venezolano Antibloqueo: Creates an official government body to monitor the impact of unilateral coercive measures and evaluate implementation of the law.
Severity 4 is warranted on qualitative grounds:
1. Horizontal derogation authority (Article 19) — Unlike sector-specific counter-sanctions laws (e.g., Russia's Federal Law 127-FZ which targets specific commercial-law obligations toward "unfriendly states"), the Antibloqueo Law grants open-ended authority to suspend any Venezuelan law by presidential decree. This is structurally the most aggressive counter- sanctions legal instrument in the Americas.
2. CIIP as sanctions-evasion architecture — The CIIP was explicitly designed to allow Venezuela to conduct large-scale FDI without disclosing investor identities, creating a mechanism that, in practice, enables covert investment from sanctioned or sanction- adjacent counterparties (Russia, Iran, China state entities). The confidentiality and asset-protection provisions directly undermine US OFAC/EU sanctions enforcement extraterritorial reach.
3. Foundational parent statute — All subsequent VE counter-sanctions regulatory actions derive their authority from this law. Filing this parent opens the VE issuer-country sub-corpus of the register.
4. Sanctioned-economy laboratory — Venezuela has been subject to US sectoral sanctions (EO 13808, 2017), comprehensive financial sanctions (EO 13850, 2018), and full OFAC blocking (EO 13884, 2019). The Antibloqueo Law is the executive legal response to that three-year escalation.
Severity is held to 4 rather than 5 because (a) Venezuela's overall economic weight is reduced from its pre-sanctions peak, and (b) the CIIP has had limited documented success in attracting FDI at scale under the confidential framework.
oil/gas or mining under CIIP auspices is structurally opaque — counterparty identities will not appear in public Venezuelan registry filings. This complicates OFAC SDN screening for financial institutions with Venezuela exposure.
Article 19 authority to suspend specific laws — these are the operational output of this parent statute and each constitutes a discrete filing event for the register.
nationals working for foreign firms that implement sanctions compliance programs affecting Venezuela — a structural friction for any multinational with Venezuelan staff.
protection structure involving Chevron's Venezuela JV licences (OFACLicense GL44 series) if those come under renewed sanctions pressure.
envisaged — the degree to which the CIIP has been operationalised remains unclear.
CIIP utilisation depending on Western sanctions trajectory.
should be filed as AMENDMENT entries or as linked actions with responds_to pointing to this slug.