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Thursday, June 01, 2017, 12:19
Nomura bought controversial Venezuelan bonds at discount
By Reuters
Thursday, June 01, 2017, 12:19 By Reuters

Pedestrians walk past signage of Nomura Securities in front of its branch in Tokyo on October 29, 2013. (Kazuhiro Nogi / AFP)

CARACAS - Japanese investment bank Nomura Securities bought about US$100 million worth of Venezuelan government bonds last week as part of the same transaction that has landed Goldman Sachs Group Inc in the middle of a political storm, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday. 

Nomura's trading arm paid about US$30 million for the debt, a steep discount to where the troubled country's bonds trade in the market, the newspaper reported, citing people familiar with the matter. 

Nomura declined to comment. 

Goldman has said its asset-management arm acquired US$2.8 billion of the October 2022 bonds issued by Venezuela's oil company PDVSA "on the secondary market from a broker and did not interact with the Venezuelan government." 

The president of Venezuela's opposition-run Congress, Julio Borges, accused Goldman of "aiding and abetting the country's dictatorial regime" in the deal. 

Venezuela's opposition has campaigned to dissuade Wall Street firms from financing the President Nicolas Maduro's government, which has drawn international condemnation for abuses of power and human rights violations. 

The nation's opposition-led National Assembly on Tuesday voted to ask the US Congress to investigate the Goldman deal, which they called immoral, opaque, and hypocritical given the socialist government's anti-Wall Street rhetoric.


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