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.

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.

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

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.

An affiliate of Elliott Investment Management on Friday was named the presumptive winner in a U.S. court auction of shares in a parent of oil refiner Citgo Petroleum with a bid that puts an up to $7.286 billion enterprise value on Venezuela-owned Citgo,