The Bank of England decided to refuse the application of the government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, who asked to return to the country gold bars in the amount of $ 1.2 billion. Bloomberg reports citing sources familiar with the situation.

The decision of representatives of the Bank, according to one of the interlocutors of the Agency, was made after American officials, including Secretary of state Mike Pompeo and the US President’s adviser on national security John Bolton, lobbied their British colleagues to help them “to excommunicate the Maduro regime from its foreign assets.”

The decision of the Bank of England is the beginning of the process of protecting the assets of the people. About this in his Twitter said the speaker of Parliament of Venezuela Juan Guaido who took upon themselves the execution of the powers of the President.

“The process of protecting Venezuela’s assets has been initiated. We will not allow more abuse and theft of money intended for food, medicine and the future of our children,” wrote Guaido, attaching to the post screenshots of the news about the refusal of the Bank of England to provide funds to Maduro.

On January 23, the UK, as Bloomberg reminds, followed the example of the USA and other countries and recognized the speaker of the Venezuelan national Assembly (local Parliament) Juan Guaido as the legitimate President of the Bolivarian Republic.

Now the US officials, according to sources of the Agency, are trying to transfer foreign assets of Venezuela to Guido. This, in their opinion, will increase his chances of “effective control over the government ” of the country. Gold at $ 1.2 billion is a large part of the $ 8 billion in foreign reserves that belong to the Venezuelan Central Bank, Bloomberg notes. The location of the remaining assets, according to it, for the most part unknown.

At the same time, part of Venezuela’s gold and foreign exchange reserves, according to the Agency, is in Turkey. The United States in this regard, with the help of allies are working to convince Ankara to stop being a channel for the storage of this cargo (Turkey, along with Russia and China is a key supporter of Maduro).

Gold extraction from the Bank of England, according to two Bloomberg sources, has been a top priority for the Maduro regime for several weeks now. Back in mid-December last year, the President of the Central Bank of Venezuela Calixto Ortega led a delegation in London, which arrived in the capital of Britain to gain access to assets, they said.

However, the negotiations, according to them, were not successful. Since then, the relationship between the two sides broke: officials of the Venezuelan Central Bank was ordered not to try to contact the Bank of England, says one of the Agency’s interlocutors.