Foreign Ministry denies Russian involvement in creation of petro

MOSCOW, Mar 23 (PRIME) – The Finance Ministry has nothing to do with the creation of the Venezuelan cryptocurrency, and any speculations on the matter are a lie, Foreign Ministry’s spokesman Artyom Kozhin said on Friday, when the Time reported that Russia had allegedly assisted Venezuela in the launch of the petro.

“We saw this fake news that pretends to be a scoop about an uncorroborated Russian authorship of Venezuelan cryptocurrency petro. Certainly this so-called exclusive investigation is a bare-faced lie. The Finance Ministry gave the colleagues from the Time comments on the matter,” he said.

The Finance Ministry said that it “never had or has nothing to do with the Venezuelan cryptocurrency petro” and that “the Russian financial authorities had not participated in this project in whatever role.”

Moreover, during Russian–Venezuelan consultations at the Finance Ministry’s level, “the matter of any use of the cryptocurrency in bilateral cooperation had never been raised by any of the parties, discussed or studied.”

“We’d like to ask the colleagues from the Time and other journalists interested in this matter to use only verified official information since sources that are frequently referred to are either unfamiliar with the issue or misinform reporters on purpose,” Kozhin said.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said earlier on Friday that he had authorized purchases of the petro for Russian rubles, among other currencies.

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