The Venezuelan Foreign Ministry has rejected, “in the strongest terms,” the imposition of new sanctions by the United States Treasury Department against 16 officials accused of cooperating in carrying out electoral fraud in Venezuela. It has called them a “crime of aggression.” “The wrongly called ‘sanctions,’ which have been shamefully promoted by the fascist right, break and violate the Qatar agreements and seek to impose on an entire country their political intentions of ‘regime change’ as part of the Monroe Doctrine,” it said in a statement.
By mentioning the Qatar agreements, which the government of Nicolás Maduro made public a few weeks ago, the Chavistas point to the lifting of sanctions that Washington promised to do if there were free and competitive elections. In the official statement, Caracas assures that they will fail in their attempts to surround them diplomatically and that Venezuela will continue “consolidating its participatory and leading democratic process” and “strengthening its ties with other nations that do understand diplomacy, respect and cooperation.”
Tensions in the country’s political crisis have increased since opposition candidate Edmundo González was forced into exile in Spain, where the Congress of Deputies asked Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez to recognise him as president-elect – which has not yet happened – and he has received him at Moncloa. The head of the Venezuelan Parliament, Jorge Rodríguez, has asked to break relations with the European country although no movement or comment has yet been made from Miraflores.
Washington’s measures further complicate the international panorama and set up a new period of isolation for Maduro, who has been proclaimed the winner of the elections without yet presenting the complete results. With these premises, the opposition accuses Chavismo of fraud and defends its victory according to the official minutes collected by witnesses on July 28. Maduro, including his wife Cilia Flores and his son Nicolás Maduro Guerra, the prosecutor Tarek William Saab, the vice president Delcy Rodríguez, ministers, former Supreme Court judges, and military chiefs have been under sanctions since at least 2017. The rectors of the National Electoral Council, Elvis Amoroso and Carlos Quintero, also had measures in place for several years.
The individual sanctions involve freezing assets and suspending visas for 16 officials involved in human rights violations, corruption and anti-democratic practices. The list announced on Thursday includes the president of the Supreme Court of Justice who conducted the alleged expert opinion of the Electoral Chamber to validate the questioned electoral results with which the National Electoral Council declared Nicolás Maduro the winner. In addition, the other magistrates of that chamber, Inocencio Figueroa, Malaquías Gil, Juan Carlos Hidalgo and Fanny Márquez, have been included. Also included are the principal rector of the CNE, Rosalba Gil, and the general secretary of this organization, Antonio Meneses.
Luis Ernesto Dueñez, the prosecutor assigned to the investigation against Edmundo González, and the judge of the anti-terrorism court, Edward Briceño, who issued the arrest warrant against the opposition candidate and has followed the proceedings of most of the more than 1,700 people arrested after the elections, have been sanctioned, as has Dinorah Bustamante, a military prosecutor included in the list. The vice president of the National Assembly, deputy Pedro Infante, has also been singled out.
In a second group of those sanctioned with measures such as the freezing of assets and the suspension of visas to enter the United States are five military personnel who are part of the repressive arm of the Maduro Government, such as General Domingo Hernández Lárez, head of the Strategic Operational Command of the Armed Forces, Johan Hernández Lárez and Elio Estrada of the National Guard, in addition to Asdrúbal Brito, of the Military Counterintelligence Directorate, and Miguel Muñoz, deputy director of the Bolivarian Intelligence Service.
#Venezuela #rejects #sanctions #officials