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NEW YORK: 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 US 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 US financial system, freeze their US assets and generally bar Americans from transacting with them.
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 US 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 US 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.
