Spokane-based mining company Gold Reserve Inc. says it raised just more than $34 million in a private placement stock offering where the proceeds will be used for general working capital purposes.

The stock offering closed this week.

Since March, Gold Reserve issued 8.6 million shares at $4 per share, the company says.

Private placements often attract institutional investors, such as large banks, mutual funds, insurance companies, and pension funds.

Gold Reserve’s common shares trade in the U.S. through an over-the-counter exchange, OTCQB, under the symbol GDRZ, as well as under the symbol GRV on the TSX Venture Exchange for emerging companies.

Gold Reserve is incorporated in Canada, but has its executive offices at 926 W. Sprague in downtown Spokane.

The company also says a memorandum of understanding it reached in February with the government of Venezuela has been extended from May 12 to May 27, allowing the parties more time to potentially reach a settlement agreement.

It has been necessary for Gold Reserve to generate capital for operational costs due to an eight-year legal battle with that South American country over its seizure of Gold Reserve’s primary mining property. Gold Reserve was awarded $765 million in international court and continues to use the courts to attempt to secure the award.

Gold Reserve says it made progress in March when it entered into a memorandum of understanding with Venezuela to secure the award while jointly developing a gold mine called the Brisas-Cristinas project.

The gold and copper deposit located in the southeastern part of Venezuela is expected to be the largest gold mine in South America and one of the largest in the world, Gold Reserve executives have said.

“This is a tremendous opportunity for the company and Venezuela to jointly develop the Brisas-Cristinas project while providing economic growth in the region and the creation of a new industry complementary to the republic’s existing oil industry,” Belanger said in a written statement in March.

The agreement also calls for Venezuela to pay an amount yet to be agreed upon for Gold Reserve’s mining data that it had gathered previously at the Brisas-Cristinas project.

Gold Reserve claims it invested $300 million into Brisas from the early 1990s to the time the project was expropriated by the Venezuelan government in 2008. The company was in the process of clearing the Brisas site when the government revoked its construction permit.

Later in 2008, Gold Reserve sued the Venezuelan government for $2.3 billion after the country seized the project, which it had been operating for 16 years.

Venezuela and Gold Reserve estimate it will cost $2 billion to develop the Brisas-Cristinas project.

Under the proposed agreement, the Brisas and Cristinas properties, together with the technical data Gold Reserve owns on Brisas, would be transferred to a Venezuelan mixed company that’s expected to be 55 percent owned by Venezuela and 45 percent by Gold Reserve.

Last July, Gold Reserve Board Chairman James H. Coleman and CEO Rockne J. Timm met with four members of Venezuela’s government and others to discuss settling the award.

In January, the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., issued an order ruling that Gold Reserve could register the judgment in other U.S. District Courts to pursue the award.