There is one recent precedent for indicting a current head of state such as Maduro on drug- and corruption-related charges. Maduro and his henchmen continue to control the levers of power, even as Venezuela slides closer to failed-state status, and can be expected to do so for years to come. In the PDVSA-related cases, US authorities not only obtained credible evidence of numerous individuals’ participation in PDVSA-related bribery, but had some reasonable expectation of obtaining personal jurisdiction over those people - either because those individuals were already physically present in the United States or could be extradited from third countries to the United States to face US charges.īy contrast, the individuals named in the 2020 Maduro-related indictments who reside in Venezuela have no reason to fear that the Justice Department can force their extradition to stand trial. What distinguishes the PDVSA prosecutions from those indictments is one simple fact. hen the Justice Department had no realistic expectation of apprehending any of the Maduro-indictment defendants in Venezuela, it is evident that the primary true purpose of those indictments was to “name and shame” Maduro and his regime, rather than to accomplish genuine enforcement of US laws. There should be no doubt that the Maduro regime is, in the words of Attorney General Barr, “awash in corruption and criminality.” Nor is there any reason to doubt that the Justice Department and other US law enforcement agencies have credible evidence to support the 2020 Maduro indictments. It is, therefore, important to recognize a critical difference between the Justice Department’s PDVSA-related prosecutions and the 2020 Maduro indictments. In the wake of that now-discredited and failed strategy, some people might be tempted to ask whether the Justice Department is, as Venezuelans say, “ Más perdido que Adán el día de las Madres” (more lost than Adam on Mother’s Day - i.e., very lost). The 2020 Maduro indictments yielded no arrests of indicted officials in Venezuela, European Union member states and various Latin American nations no longer recognized Guaidó as the interim president, and Maduro maintained his grip on power despite an increasingly severe humanitarian and refugee crisis inside Venezuela.

Collectively, these are known as the “2020 Maduro indictments.”īut by early 2021, the “maximum pressure” strategy was in tatters.

Those measures also included the active support of then-Attorney General William Barr for the Justice Department obtaining indictments of Maduro himself and 14 other current or former senior Venezuelan officials for a vareity of charges, including narco-terrorism and cocaine-importation conspiracy, corruption, and money laundering. The United States began to apply a combination of diplomatic, financial, economic, and political measures to drive Maduro from office and enable a transition government to convene free and fair elections. Subsequently, in 2019 the Venezuelan political opposition declared the position of president vacant and ratified the then-National Assembly President Juan Guaidó as interim president.īy 2020, the Trump administration escalated its “maximum pressure” strategy, with the United States and other countries recognizing Guaidó as the legitimate interim president. That strategy, which sought to force Maduro from office, intensified after he was reelected in 2018 in an election reportedly marked with massive irregularities. Since 2017, however, the purpose and importance of those prosecutions were increasingly overshadowed by the Trump administration’s strategy of so-called “maximum pressure” against the authoritarian regime of President Nicolás Maduro Moros. The US Department of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control has also been able to sanction individuals and companies related to the PDVSA embezzlement scheme. The investigation led to the Justice Department obtaining criminal charges against 28 individuals to date, 22 of whom have pleaded guilty.

The Justice Department’s investigation also documented an intricate web of criminality that included former PDVSA officials, professional third-party money launderers, and members of the Venezuelan elite. (PDVSA), profuse bribery of officials at PDVSA and the PDVSA subsidiary Citgo Petroleum Corporation, and massive amounts of laundering of PDVSA-related embezzled funds and bribe payments.

The investigation exposed, among other crimes: the embezzlement of $1.2 billion of funds from the Venezuelan state-owned and state-controlled energy company, Petroleos de Venezuela S.A. Since at least 2010, the US Department of Justice has been conducting a broad-ranging criminal investigation into crimes committed by Venezuelan former and current officials and businesspeople.

Dia de las madres 2021 venezuela