WASHIGTON.- United States moves chips to tighten the siege on the Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Ripe with a bill that prohibits signing contracts with people or companies that do business with any government of that country not recognized by Washington.
Almost four months after the Venezuelan elections, the US House of Representatives on Monday approved the bipartisan Bolívar bill, which still needs the green light from the Senate and the president’s signature to go into effect.
The text, officially called Prohibition of Operations and Leases with the Illegitimate Venezuelan Authoritarian Regimeprohibits the United States from signing contracts with people who conduct business “with the illegitimate government of Nicolás Maduro” or with anyone else “not recognized as legitimate by the United States.”
Caracas reacted with a sulphurous statement in which it described it as a “criminal attack.”
“In a shameless way, they have given him the acronym Bolívar, in an offense against the greatest genius in American history, who dedicated his life to defeating imperialism and colonialism, anti-values contained in this new criminal attack,” wrote the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the dictatorship.
According to the Venezuelan regime, this instrument is intended to prevent economic cooperation between both countries and violates the UN Charter “adding to the more than 930 unilateral and extraterritorial coercive measures” imposed on Caracas.
Washington considers the last two reelections of the dictator Maduro fraudulent and supports Edmundo González Urrutia, the electoral candidate of the opposition leader María Corina Machado, who was forced to go into exile in Spain after the elections.
One of the promoters of the bill is Republican Mike Waltz, a hawk chosen by the American president-elect, the Republican Donald Trump, as future National Security Advisor to the White House. And he doesn’t beat around the bush.
“Venezuela is in crisis due to the illegitimate government and authoritarian and the Marxist policies of Nicolás Maduro and his Caracas cartel,” he says in a statement published on Monday.
Cut “support network”
“Our policy must be based on solidarity with the brave activists who strive to break the chains of oppression and not provide aid and comfort to their oppressors,” adds the Republican congressman, in favor of expanding sanctions against the government of the Caribbean country.
“There will be no appeasement, there will be no tolerance,” Waltz insists.
The other sponsor of the law, Democrat Debbie Wasserman Schultz, agrees on the need to “tighten the pins.”
“Unless the United States gets rid of the shady corporate interests that enable Maduro’s corruption and electoral theft, we cannot truly say we are committed to the Venezuelan people,” he says.
This congresswoman has already promoted two other bills presented in the lower house of Congress with Republican colleagues.
On the one hand, the Revoke law, with the objective of rescinding licenses granted to several oil companies to operate in Venezuela, and on the other, the Valor law, which, among other things, reaffirms the financial sanctions against the Central Bank of Venezuela, Petróleos de Venezuela, and the Venezuelan cryptocurrencies and blocks foreign assistance to any country that helps Maduro.
Venezuela’s oil industry has been under sanctions since 2019 but Washington grants individual licenses to operate in Venezuela to several companies, such as the American Chevron, the Spanish Repsol and the French Maurel & Prom.
Trump’s electoral victory threatens to harden Washington’s position, especially after he chose Senator Marco Rubio, of Cuban origin, as the future head of diplomacy, according to experts.
Trump’s electoral victory threatens to harden Washington’s position, especially after he chose Senator Marco Rubio, of Cuban origin, as the future head of diplomacy, according to experts. Rubio “will bring with it a hardening of policy towards Venezuela and Cuba, stricter sanctions and, unfortunately, harsher and more unconstructive rhetoric,” Christopher Sabatini, a researcher for Latin America at the British analysis center Chatham House, told AFP, even before Trump chose the Latin senator for the post.
