IDB expelled Nicolás Maduro's representative and acknowledged Juan Guaidó's envoy

The IDB on Friday expelled the representative of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and voted in favor of Juan Guaidó, the leader of the opposition leader, to become a multilateral lender.

The IDB stated in a statement that the appointment of Guaidó's representative, the economist Ricardo Hausmann, it came into effect immediately after a vote of the lender's Board of Governors, which has 48 members.

The bank on Friday approved the proposal to certify Hausmann, an economist at Harvard University and a longtime critic of the Nicolás Maduro regime, as the IDB's governor in the country. Guaidó appointed Hausmann to this post at the end of last month and described as "invalid" Governor Oswaldo Javier Perez Cuevas and his deputy, Santiago Armando Lazo Ortega.

Although the IDB did not disclose specific votes, its three largest shareholders in terms of voting shares (United States, Brazil and Argentina) support Guaidó. This decision could lead other multilateral banks to choose a camp, while the fight for power in Venezuela intensifies almost two months after the declaration of Guaidó by the United States as legitimate president of the country.

Hausmann, who has been part of the Harvard faculty since 2000, is well known in Washington's political circles. He was the first chief economist of the IDB, a position he held from 1994 to 2000, and chairman of the IMF and World Bank Development Committee. In 2015, a group of Venezuelan experts started at Harvard. Several of his colleagues and former students have advised Guaidó to design what they call the "next day plan" for Venezuela after two decades of Chavismo.

The IDB, based in Washington, is a multilateral bank specializing in financing in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Guaidó invoked the Constitution to badume the interim presidency in January, after Congress declared dictator Nicolás Maduro usurper, for having been re-elected in a vote deemed fraudulent in May 2018. Since then, he has appointed ambbadadors and representatives throughout the country. world to negotiate with more than 50 countries that recognize it as the only legitimate authority in the country.

(With information from Reuters and Bloomberg)