Creditors seeking proceeds from a U.S. court-ordered auction of shares in a parent of Citgo Petroleum to compensate them for Venezuela's debt defaults and expropriations on Tuesday widely criticized terms of a conditional offer selected in the second bidding round.

Elliott and other U.S. investors have agreed to pay nearly $7.3 billion to acquire Citgo’s parent company, with proceeds set to help compensate creditors of the bankrupt Venezuelan government.

An Elliott Investment Management affiliate won an auction for Citgo Petroleum Corp.’s parent company with a bid for $7.3 billion, clearing a key hurdle in the fund’s push to acquire an oil refiner that was once Venezuela’s largest foreign asset.

A conditional offer for shares in Citgo Petroleum's parent by financial firm Elliott Investment Management was accepted by a U.S. court officer overseeing an auction that could decide the future control of the Venezuela-owned oil refiner,

Activist investor Elliott Investment Management won the U.S. court auction for shares in Citgo Petroleum's parent company, PDV Holding, valuing it at $7.286 billion. The auction aims to repay claims against Venezuela and state oil firm PDVSA.

The $7.3 billion offer from Elliott Investment Management falls significantly short of the Venezuelan refiner’s valuation.

Goff, who joined Exxon in 2021 as part of a dissident slate of directors, was on Friday identified as CEO of Amber Energy, an Elliott affiliate, in a statement heralding its selection as the successful bidder in a U.S. court auction of shares in Citgo parent PDV Holding.