The US government has slapped economic sanctions on a top Venezuelan aviation official who also heads state-owned airline Conviasa, part of a broader move targeting officials the USA deems as enabling the illegitimate government of president Nicolas Maduro.
Conviasa president Ramon Celestino Velasquez Araguayan, who has also been Venezuela’s minister of transportation since May 2023, is among eight Venezuelan officials hit with new US sanctions, the US Department of the Treasury said on 10 January.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken calls the eight officials “Maduro-aligned individuals supporting Maduro’s illegitimate assertion of authority and repressive acts in Venezuela”.
Those officials “lead key economic and security agencies enabling Nicolas Maduro’s repression and subversion of democracy in Venezuela”, adds the Treasury department.
The seven other newly sanctioned Venezuelan leaders include the head of the country’s state-owned oil company, a minister of interior policy, and five police and military officials. US citizens are now prohibited from conducting business with those people and from involvement in transactions involving their property.
The USA disclosed the sanctions the day Maduro was sworn into a six-year presidential term. Maduro claims he won a July election, though opposition leaders, the US government and other Western nations say he actually lost.
“Nicolas Maduro held an illegitimate presidential inauguration in Venezuela in a desperate attempt to seize power,” Blinken says. “Maduro clearly lost the 2024 presidential election and has no right to claim the presidency.”
The USA has already directly sanctioned Conviasa. In 2020, then-US Treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin said Maduro “relies on the Venezuelan state-owned airline Conviasa to shuttle corrupt regime officials around the world to fuel support for its anti-democratic efforts”.
