Maduro’s government described US sanctions against officials as a desperate act

Venezuela described the new sanctions that the United States imposed this Wednesday on 21 officials, among them 15 soldiers, whom Washington accuses of leading the repression so that Nicolás Maduro could “fraudulently” declare himself re-elected president.

“The measures announced today – by the United States – are a desperate act by a decadent and erratic government, which seeks to hide its resounding electoral failure and the serious social crisis in which it leaves the country,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement. after rejecting the sanctions against the “group of patriots.”

The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the United States Treasury Department sanctioned the head of the intelligence service Alexis José Rodríguez Cabello; to that of the Directorate of Military Counterintelligence, General Javier José Marcano Tábata; to that of the national police, General Rubén Santiago, and to officials of the National Guard (GNB).

The Minister of Communication, Freddy Ñáñez, was also sanctioned; that of the Office of the Presidency, Rear Admiral Aníbal Coronado Millán; Planning, Ricardo Menéndez; that of the Penitentiary Service, Julio García Zerpa, and Daniela Cabello, daughter of the Minister of the Interior, Diosdado Cabello.

Those sanctioned “have supported and carried out Maduro’s orders to repress civil society in their efforts to fraudulently declare themselves the winner of Venezuela’s July 28 presidential elections,” the Treasury said in a statement.

The electoral authority proclaimed Maduro as re-elected president amid complaints of fraud by the opposition and without presenting the details of the vote count.

The opposition, led by María Corina Machado and her candidate Edmundo González Urrutia, published copies of more than 80% of the electoral records on a website, with which they claim their victory.

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