Venezuelan tax authorities said Houston-based Pride International, one of the world's top oil drilling firms, evaded paying more than $32 million in taxes and now must make good on the bill.
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.
EFE News Services
