Venezuela's interim President Delcy Rodríguez said on July 8 she had written to Britain's King Charles III requesting the release of about 30 tonnes of Venezuelan gold held at the Bank of England, saying the reserves were needed to fund reconstruction after last month's devastating twin earthquakes.

Rodríguez told state television she had decided to send the letter "requesting the release of the gold held at the Bank of England," adding that the bullion "belongs to our people and should be used to address the terrible and tragic consequences caused by the twin earthquakes."

Two earthquakes measuring magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 struck Venezuela on June 24, 39 seconds apart, according to the US Geological Survey. The quakes caused widespread destruction and triggered a large-scale national and international humanitarian response.

Rodríguez said Venezuela sorely needed the sovereign assets to speed up reconstruction, boost employment, revive economic activity and restore education services in the affected areas, adding that she wanted the funds channelled directly towards social welfare programmes for those affected.

Earlier on July 8, Rodríguez reportedly held a phone call with IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva to press for the release of separate Venezuelan funds frozen at the Fund. "I had a call with the director of the IMF, whom I thank for her attention and understanding, regarding the release of blocked Venezuelan funds held at the IMF," she said. Venezuela holds about 3.568bn in IMF Special Drawing Rights, equivalent to roughly $5.1bn, which have been frozen since the Fund declined to recognise Nicolás Maduro as president in 2019. The Washington-based lender resumed contacts with Caracas in April and said it stands ready to discuss how it could best support Venezuela's recovery after assessing the country's needs.

But William Castillo, Venezuela's deputy minister for Anti-Blockade Policies, said earlier this week that only $200mn of the SDR-linked resources had been made available so far, with that initial amount to be managed through the Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean (CAF).

Foreign Minister Yván Gil separately called for the release of all of Venezuela's blocked resources held abroad.

Rodríguez, who served as Maduro's vice president, assumed the interim presidency after Maduro was captured on January 3 in a US military operation in Caracas and flown to New York, where he faces drug-trafficking charges. She now governs under de facto US tutelage, having won repeated praise from US President Donald Trump, who chose to work with her to stabilise the country rather than opposition leader and Nobel Prize laureate Maria Corina Machado.

Rodríguez has since introduced sweeping reforms opening up the country's oil and mineral wealth to US investment, and overseen a limited easing of civic and media freedoms.

However, her government's handling of last month's earthquakes has drawn mounting criticism. Many Venezuelans, both inside and outside the country, believe the authorities responded too slowly to the disaster and failed to adequately address it, an assessment Rodríguez has firmly rejected. Residents of La Guaira, the hardest-hit state, said a serious search-and-rescue operation was slow to arrive, leaving many to search for survivors with their bare hands, while officials have also faced questions over the accuracy of the death toll and the safety of the state's social housing, AP reported. The toll had climbed past 3,800 by July 8, according to official data, a figure experts said was probably an undercount.

Rodríguez has rejected the criticism as politically motivated, telling a press conference in Caracas "We activated immediately" and accusing critics of politicising a humanitarian tragedy, according to AP. She went on to dismiss the backlash as propaganda generated by a “media machine.” "That was a natural tragedy of a scale we never imagined, even though we knew that a seismic event could occur in our country,” Rodriguez said.

An April poll by AtlasIntel for Bloomberg found approval of Rodríguez's government at a meagre 31% even before the earthquakes struck.

Long-running dispute

The Bank of England has held Venezuela's gold since 2019, when it declined to release the reserves to the Maduro government on the grounds that the UK did not recognise him as Venezuela's legitimate president. Caracas sued for the return of the gold in 2020, arguing the funds were needed to address the COVID-19 emergency, but the case was ultimately rejected by the UK Supreme Court in 2023.

Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper told MPs in January, shortly after Maduro's ouster, that the UK's position remained unchanged because successive governments had not recognised the Venezuelan authorities, which she said was the basis for the Bank of England's decision.

Estimates of the gold's value have risen with global bullion prices. The holdings were worth about $1.95bn in 2020, and had reached roughly $3.6bn (GBP2.2bn) by January 2026. Venezuelan outlet El Nacional has put the figure at more than $4bn. The London-held gold is estimated to represent close to 30% of Venezuela's foreign reserves held abroad.

The Bank of England's vaults hold around 400,000 gold bars on behalf of central banks worldwide, the second-largest concentration globally after the US Federal Reserve.

Depleted reserves

Venezuela's gold holdings have shrunk sharply since Maduro took office in 2013. The country held about 360 tonnes of gold in 2014, according to World Gold Council data, worth an estimated $50bn at current prices, but stopped reporting its holdings to the council in 2018 after selling reserves to raise hard currency, including to allies like Turkey, Russia and the United Arab Emirates, and reportedly to Iran. Venezuela's dollar reserves stood at about $13bn as of May, down from around $42bn in 2008.

In 2019 the US Treasury warned bankers, brokers and traders against dealing in gold, oil or other Venezuelan commodities it said had been "stolen from the Venezuelan people by the Maduro mafia."

Separately, Switzerland holds about 127 tonnes of Venezuelan gold, valued at more than $5bn, which Swiss authorities said they had frozen following Maduro's capture, along with other assets linked to him and his entourage.

The UK Foreign Office has said it is monitoring developments in Venezuela in coordination with the Bank of England as the political situation evolves.