Sanctioned Venezuelan tycoon Gorrín avoids auction of his luxury apartment in New York

US-sanctioned Venezuelan media tycoon Raúl Gorrín said he has received permission to make the necessary payments to avoid losing a luxury apartment in New York City.

The owner of the Venezuelan television channel Globovisión and an ally of socialist President Nicolás Maduro told Reuters on Wednesday night that he had received a license from the US Treasury Department to pay $650,000 he owes to the building’s condominium board and the New York City.

The license from Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) prevented a public auction of the property that had been set for Wednesday afternoon, Gorrín said.

OFAC did not respond to a request for comment, while the Treasury Department declined to comment.

Gorrín bought the 1,371-square-meter apartment on the 47th floor of the Baccarat Hotel & Residences for $18.8 million in November 2017, at the height of Venezuela’s economic collapse, New York City property records show. York.

Gorrín was sanctioned by the government of then President Donald Trump in January 2019 as part of an attempt to oust Maduro from office.

In early 2019, Gorrin stopped paying common fees of about $10,000 a month to the building’s condominium board, according to court records.

The sanctions prevent those affected from accessing the US financial system, freezing their assets in that country and preventing Americans from carrying out transactions with them. An attorney for Gorrín said the sanctions had prevented him from making the payments and that OFAC had not granted prior applications for a license authorizing him to pay.

The board won a court order in August 2020 to collect $184,876 in back payments from RIM Group Properties of New York II, the company through which Gorrín owns the apartment.

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