WASHINGTON: The United States on Friday imposed sanctions on family members and associates of Nicolas Maduro and his wife, as Washington ratchets up pressure on the Venezuelan president.<\/p>\n
The US Treasury Department in a statement said it had imposed sanctions on seven people it said were tied to Maduro and his wife. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent accused them of \u201cpropping up Nicolas Maduro\u2019s rogue narcostate.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will not allow Venezuela to continue flooding our nation with deadly drugs,\u201d Bessent said.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaduro and his criminal accomplices threaten our hemisphere\u2019s peace and stability. The Trump administration will continue targeting the networks that prop up his illegitimate dictatorship.\u201d<\/p>\n
Venezuela\u2019s information ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n
Maduro \u2060and his government have vehemently denied links to crime and say that the US is seeking to oust him in order to take control of Venezuela\u2019s vast oil reserves.<\/p>\n
In recent months, the administration of US President Donald Trump has been ratcheting up pressure on Maduro, executing a large-scale military buildup in the southern Caribbean.<\/p>\n
It has carried out strikes against suspected drug vessels in the region, seized a sanctioned oil tanker off the \u2060coast of Venezuela, and declared a \u201cblockade\u201d of all sanctioned oil tankers entering and leaving Venezuela.<\/p>\n
Trump has also repeatedly said that strikes on land in Venezuela are coming soon.<\/p>\n
Friday\u2019s action sanctioned relatives of Carlos Erik Malpica Flores, the nephew of Maduro\u2019s wife, Cilia Flores. The US says Malpica Flores was involved in a corruption plot at state oil company PDVSA. He was sanctioned by Washington last week.<\/p>\n
His mother \u2014 the sister of Maduro\u2019s wife \u2014 as well as his father, sister, wife and daughter were hit with sanctions on Friday.<\/p>\n
The Treasury on Friday also extended a general license protecting Venezuela-owned refiner Citgo Petroleum from creditors through February 3 that was set to expire \u2060on December 20. It was a far shorter extension than the last one Treasury issued in June, which had a six-month duration.<\/p>\n
Washington has protected the Houston-based company from creditors in recent years even amid a court-organized auction of shares in its parent company, PDV Holding. The license temporarily bans transactions with a Venezuela-issued bond collateralized with Citgo equity.<\/p>\n
A US judge in November authorized the sale of shares in the parent of Citgo Petroleum to an affiliate of Elliott Investment Management, following his approval of a $5.9 billion bid from the company in a court-organized auction to pay Venezuela-linked creditors.<\/p>\n
The sale order, which is pending Treasury Department approval, was the last major legal step to wrap a two-year auction aimed at paying up to 15 creditors for debt defaults and expropriations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WASHINGTON: The United States on Friday imposed sanctions on family members and associates of Nicolas Maduro and his wife, as Washington ratchets up pressure on the Venezuelan president. The US Treasury Department in a statement said it had imposed sanctions on seven people it said were tied to Maduro and his wife. Treasury Secretary Scott …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":91301,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-91286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91286"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91286\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":91303,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91286\/revisions\/91303"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/91301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}