LONDON—A British judge on July 2 refused to give Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro control of nearly $2 billion in gold sitting in a Bank of England vault because Britain doesn’t recognize the socialist leader as president of the Latin American nation.
Maduro has demanded the gold to help his cash-starved nation fight the coronavirus pandemic. But the central bank for the United Kingdom, whose government recognizes Venezuelan opposition politician Juan Guaidó as his country’s legitimate leader, had refused to hand it over to Maduro’s administration.
