Exclusive-New York City to auction sanctioned Venezuelan mogul's
apartment
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[June 13, 2022]
By Luc Cohen
NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York City plans
next month to auction a midtown Manhattan apartment owned by a
Venezuelan media mogul with ties to socialist President Nicolas Maduro's
government, after U.S. sanctions forced him to miss condominium
payments, court records show.
Raul Gorrin, who owns Venezuelan TV channel Globovision, paid $18.8
million for the 4,500-square-foot, 47th floor unit in the Baccarat Hotel
& Residences in November 2017, at the height of Venezuela's economic
collapse.
Now, Gorrin stands to lose the apartment, which boasts views of the
Empire State Building and Central Park, after being sanctioned in
January 2019 as part of the Trump administration's push to oust Maduro.
The city's sheriff is scheduled to conduct the auction on July 6,
previously-unreported court records show.
Sanctions block those designated from accessing the U.S. financial
system, freeze their U.S. assets and generally bar Americans from
transacting with them.
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In sanctioning Gorrin, Washington said he bribed Venezuela's treasury
for the right to conduct currency exchange transactions that siphoned
billions of the country's funds to insiders.
The U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC),
which enforces sanctions, said Gorrin also bought gifts for Maduro's
wife, Cilia Flores, who was sanctioned in 2018. Venezuela's information
ministry did not respond to a request for comment.
Gorrin faces U.S. criminal charges in Florida over the alleged graft.
His lawyers did not respond to requests for comment. Gorrin, who remains
a fugitive and is believed to be in Venezuela, has not responded to the
charges.
Since being sanctioned, Gorrin has missed more than $600,000 in monthly
condominium charges and late fees for his apartment, according to
lawsuits the condominium board filed in a New York state court. The
apartment's common charges exceed $10,000 per month, court records show.
The unit is formally owned by RIM Group Properties of
New York II Corp, which Gorrin controls, according to corporate records.
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Rain clouds cover the skyline of Manhattan at the start of the
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Gorrin said in a 2020 filing that sanctions prohibited him from
paying condominium charges. He said he asked OFAC for a license to
pay, but was not approved.
Daniel Ruzumna, a partner at law firm Patterson Belknap, said
sanctions can pose difficulties for those "unwittingly caught up in
the web."
"They may not be sanctioned themselves, but they may have
interactions with those who are under sanctions. Case in point is
this particular condo group," Ruzumna said.
OFAC did not respond to a request for comment.
The board won a court order in August 2020 to collect $184,876 from
RIM Group for late payments in 2019, court records show. The board
is seeking another judgment for missed payments from 2020 onwards.
Last year, the board received OFAC's permission to sell the unit to
collect the money, according to the license, obtained by Reuters
under the Freedom of Information Act. The license was renewed in
February, court records show.
Any additional funds must be deposited into a blocked account in RIM
Group's name, which Gorrin could not access while he remains
sanctioned.
A lawyer for the board declined to comment.
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Maduro remains in power, and accuses Washington of trying to oust
him in a coup. Globovision, which once extensively covered protests
against Maduro's predecessor Hugo Chavez, softened its criticism of
the government after Gorrin bought the channel in 2013, reporters
said at the time.
(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York; Additional reporting by Daphne
Psaledakis in Washington; Editing by Noeleen Walder)
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