Seniat - the Venezuelan equivalent of the IRS - told Pride that deductions for expenses and losses in previous years it claimed in 2002 for revenue earned in Venezuela were not valid. It presented the company with a bill of $32.55 million.


The dunning is the latest in the socialist government's two-year-old "Zero Evasion Plan" focusing on foreign companies working here to extract the South American nation's main resource - oil.

Shell, an Anglo-Dutch oil company, and US-based Chevron are among the corporations hit with big back-taxes bills since 2005.