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panamajames
Joined 2012
Posts: 5096

6 years ago

US Freezes Assets of 20 Panamanian & Venezuelan Companies Under their Jurisdiction

6 years ago

The vice president of the United States, Mike Pence, asked the government of Nicolás Maduro to suspend the election called for this May 20, describing the process as "false."

In a speech delivered yesterday to the Permanent Council of the Organization of American States (OAS), Pence criticized the electoral convocation and the result that emanates from it, according to Efe agency reports.

"There will be no real elections in Venezuela on May 20 and the world knows it. They will be fake elections with a false result, "said the US vice president, demanding Maduro also to hold elections that are" real. "

During his speech, Pence also asked the member countries of the OAS to apply sanctions against Caracas and to support a suspension of the South American nation as a member of the regional organization.

"Today we ask the members of this institution to fulfill their long-standing commitment to democracy and freedom, we call on the members of the OAS to suspend Venezuela from the organization," said Pence at the extraordinary session of the Permanent Council. .

Pence also asked the American countries to prevent the Venezuelan authorities from 'laundering money in their financial systems', impose restrictions on visas and make 'Maduro accountable for destroying Venezuelan democracy', so that Venezuela recover 'your freedom'.

Pence took advantage of the moment, being the first speech of a US vice president in the OAS since 1994, to criticize the governments of Cuba and Nicaragua, demanding an end to the repression against the anti-government demonstrations.

'In Nicaragua many people have taken to the streets to protest against the government (of Daniel Ortega) and the response has been the use of force, killing many of its citizens. The United States condemns these violent actions and we ask the Government (Nicaraguan) to allow the IACHR (Inter-American Commission on Human Rights) to travel to Nicaragua, "said Pence, in statements collected by La Voz de América.

On the other hand, the Secretary General of the OAS, Luis Almagro, supported the proposal of Pence and also exhorted the American nations to sanction Venezuela.

'We ask for sanctions to end a dictatorship. Without indulgences, without folds, without doubts, "said Almagro.

The Uruguayan diplomat, who is in charge of the OAS since 2015, called on the member states to take "hard, strong, inflexible actions that rescue the civil, political, economic, and social rights of the Venezuelan people."

Almagro also pointed out Cuba, stating that on the continent there are 'two dictatorships, Cuba and Venezuela'.

"In the Americas today we are witnessing two dictatorships that deprive their people of their rights, and that refuse to offer minimum guarantees for a free and fair electoral process," he said.

He included Pedro Luis Martín Olivares, an exalt charge of the Bolivarian Intelligence Service (Sebin), whom he accuses of having laundered money with Hugo Carvajal, a trusted man of the late Hugo Chávez, on his "blacklist" of drug traffickers.

The US Department of the Treasury also announced sanctions against two other Venezuelans, Walter Alexander Del Nogal Márquez and Mario Antonio Rodríguez Espinoza, for providing financial and technological assistance to Martín Olivares for his alleged drug trafficking activities.

As a result, the Treasury sanctioned 20 Venezuelan and Panamanian companies owned by those three individuals, who will now have frozen all assets that they may have under US jurisdiction and will be prohibited from making financial transactions in the US, the bank said in a statement. .

"This action is a response to the extensive activities of Martín Olivares for drug trafficking and money laundering. Systematic corruption and the collapse of the Rule of Law are defining characteristics of the Government of Venezuela, "Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement.

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