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Tag Archives: Venezuelan
Ex-congressman indicted in probe of Venezuelan influence
CNN
—
Former Republican Rep. David Rivera of Florida was arrested in Atlanta on Monday on federal charges that include failing to register as a foreign agent and conspiracy to commit money laundering, according to the Department of Justice.
The eight-count indictment alleges that Rivera and a co-defendant, Esther Nuhfer, met with several US officials about normalizing US relations with the Venezuelan government without registering with the DOJ, as required by law.
Rivera, who is Cuban American, was paid millions of dollars for his work by PDV USA, a US subsidiary of Venezuela’s state-run oil company, to lobby American politicians for improved relations between the two nations, according to the indictment, and prevent “the United States from imposing additional economic sanctions” against Venezuela’s president and “other members of his regime.”
US officials said Rivera signed a $50 million contract with PDV USA in 2017.
Rivera served in Congress from 2011 to 2013.
Rivera’s attorney and the government of Venezuela declined CNN’s request for comment on the charges. An attorney for Nuhfer also declined to comment on the charges.
The indictment details several meetings between Rivera and US officials, including an unnamed US senator representing Florida and a congressman from Texas. Prosecutors said Rivera also tried to meet with a White House adviser to then-President Donald Trump.
In 2017, according to the indictment, Rivera met with the senator at a private residence in Washington, DC, “during which Rivera told (the senator) that Foreign Individual 1 had persuaded President (Nicolas) Maduro to accept a deal whereby he would hold free and fair elections in Venezuela,” in exchange for “reconciliation with the United States.”
A second meeting was held at a hotel in Washington, DC, with an unidentified Venezuelan politician joining by telephone.
“The ultimate goal of these efforts was to garner political support in the United States for normalization of relations between the Unites States and Venezuela, to include resolving a legal dispute between US Oil company 1 and Venezuela and preventing the United States from imposing additional economic sanctions against President Maduro and other members of his regime,” according to the government.
In 2018, the group helped arrange for a member of Congress to meet with Maduro. The group met with the Venezuelan leader on April 2, 2018. During the meeting, the unnamed congressman agreed to deliver a letter to Trump from Maduro requesting the “United States’ support for President Maduro’s plan to normalize relations in exchange for a promise to hold free and fair elections in the future.”
Sen. Marco Rubio’s office confirmed to CNN on Wednesday that the Florida Republican met with Rivera in 2017, and then subsequently met with a close associate of Maduro.
During the meeting, “Senator Rubio communicated directly what he has said publicly for over five years, that the only way sanctions should be lifted is if the regime agrees to free and fair elections. If, as is alleged, this was an effort to soften his stance on sanctions, it failed miserably,” a spokesperson for Rubio told CNN. The spokesperson also pointed to the fact that the indictment noted that the group never said to Rubio that they were lobbying on behalf of Venezuela.
Rubio is not named in the indictment and has not been accused of wrongdoing.
The maximum sentence for the conspiracy charge is five years, while the maximum sentence for failure to register as a foreign agent is five years and the maximum sentence for the money laundering count is 20 years. The maximum sentence for the five charges of engaging in transactions using the proceeds of criminal activity is 10 years each.
The government is seeking the forfeiture of $23.7 million, plus several pieces of real estate, according to the indictment.
Immigration: Biden admin working on plan to manage flow of Venezuelan migrants, sources say
CNN
—
The Biden administration is considering a new program to have Venezuelan migrants apply to arrive at US ports of entry, like an airport, instead of unlawfully crossing the southern border, if they have a pre-existing tie in the US, according to four sources familiar with discussions.
The proposal comes amid an influx of migrants from those nationalities at the US-Mexico border, straining federal resources and border cities. In August, 55,333 migrants encountered at the border were from Venezuela, Cuba or Nicaragua, a 175% increase from last August, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
The plan is intended to serve as an expanded and more orderly process. If migrants meet the criteria and are approved, they’d then be paroled into the US at an airport with the ability to also work legally.
Mexico is also expected to take a number of Venezuelans under a Trump-era pandemic emergency rule, known as Title 42, that allows authorities to turn away migrants at the US-Mexico border, according to two sources.
Administration officials have been grappling with mass migration throughout the Western Hemisphere for months, stressing the need for all countries to help alleviate the flow and create better conditions in country. The issue was a topic of discussion again last week at a meeting of foreign ministers in Lima, Peru.
The shift in demographics – with many of the migrants now from Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua – is uniquely difficult for the US given, in part, frosty relations with those nations that largely bar the administration from removing people from those countries.
The proposal that’s under consideration is an acknowledgment of the reality that Venezuelans are largely released in the US while they go through immigration proceedings, and in some cases, have family or friends they are joining in the country.
CNN has reached out to the White House for comment.
The Biden administration took a similar approach as the one under consideration with Ukrainians fleeing their war-torn country, allowing them entry into the United States as well as the ability to work for a temporary period. That program was set up to avoid having Ukrainians to the US-Mexico border and come through an orderly process.
Poor economic conditions, food shortages and limited access to health care are increasingly pushing Venezuelans to leave – posing an urgent and steep challenge to the administration as thousands arrive at the US southern border.
More than 6 million Venezuelans have fled their country amid deteriorating conditions, matching Ukraine in the number of displaced people and surpassing Syria, according to the United Nations. More than 1,000 Venezuelans are apprehended along the US-Mexico border daily, according to a Homeland Security official.
Venezuelans apprehended at the US-Mexico border are generally paroled into the US and released under an Immigrations and Customs Enforcement program that monitors people using GPS ankle monitors, phones or an app while they go through their immigration proceedings. But the latest proposal is expected to take a more organized approach.
The jump in Venezuelans moving in the hemisphere came up during a meeting at the White House last month with 19 Western Hemisphere nations, a senior administration official previously told CNN.
“We do find that a lack of coordination leads to more migrants being exploited,” the senior administration official said. “There’s consensus that there’s value in us working more closely and trying to synchronize our policies.”
This story has been updated with additional information Tuesday.
A Venezuelan family’s harrowing, 10-country trek to New York City, with their Pitbull in tow
But their relative calm these days disguises an agonizing journey that started in Lima, Peru, after economic fortune dried up and the family became targets of xenophobic rants.
“The economy began to go down in Peru,” Crisman Urbaez told CNN. “We couldn’t afford much food. There’s also a lot of xenophobia against Venezuelans in Latin America. Sometimes people insulted us, and I didn’t want that for my children.”
Using cars for transportation, the family crossed parts of Ecuador and Colombia in late April. Then a four-day walk through the jungles of northern Colombia landed them in Panama.
Sebastian Urbaez, the couple’s son, told CNN there were times when he was exhausted. In those moments, he said, Max would lie on him and lick his cheek to cheer him up.
“He was so tough. He just kept walking with us. He’s not just a dog. He’s like our brother now,” Sebastian, 9, said.
Determined to get Max into the United States, the family said they got him on several buses by wrapping him in a blanket and passing him off as a child.
“Costa Rica was hard to get through. Once they realized Max was a dog, they asked us to get off the bus,” Crisman said. “But we kept trying.”
After weeks of sleeping on cardboard and safely navigating their way through Mexico, the family crossed the Rio Grande and turned themselves in to immigration authorities in Eagle Pass, Texas, on June 19.
Asking for asylum and searching for Max
The Urbaez family asked for asylum upon crossing the border.
But immigration officials did not want to accept Max into the country. They told Anabel to think of her children and leave the dog behind.
“But I just couldn’t,” Anabel said. “Not after everything he’s gone through with our family.”
Sebastian and his 6-year-old sister, Criszanyelis, began to cry as the family begged immigration officers to allow them to take Max with them, to no avail.
“There was one officer, who I believe God put in our path,” Anabel told CNN. “I’m so thankful for him. He also cried a bit. He then told me he took Max to a shelter and gave me the address for the shelter so I could go look for him once we were released.”
The immigration officer, according to Anabel, recognized Max from articles that were published by Latin American news outlets, which had covered the family’s unusual journey. The Mexican news outlet Posta nicknamed the dog “Max, the migrant dog.”
After release, the family trekked to the dog shelter to retrieve Max. But the shelter told them they had released Max to a man who claimed he was related to the family. The Urbaez family was able to locate the man — a fellow migrant who had traveled with the family, according to Anabel. He agreed to return Max if they picked him up in Uvalde, Texas.
With the help of a stranger who offered to give the family a ride, the Urbaezes were reunited with Max the next day.
They then found themselves in Uvalde Memorial Park, where Criszanyelis left a toy at the memorial set up for the 21 victims of the Robb Elementary School shooting, Anabel said.
The urban jungle
After release from US custody, immigration officials in Texas had directed the Urbaez family to a shelter in New York City and scheduled a meeting with immigration court.
The family, with Max safely in its custody, was now determined to reach New York and appear before a judge.
With the help of a stranger, who came across the Urbaezes stranded at a gas station, the family caught a ride to San Antonio, where they hoped to find more help.
In San Antonio, they approached an organization that provides assistance to immigrants (Anabel does not recall the group’s name but said all workers wore blue jackets).
“They helped us out and got us plane tickets to New York City but when they realized we had a dog, they canceled our tickets.” Crisman said.
The family told CNN they begged the organization for help, and they finally agreed to get the family bus tickets to New York City. The Urbaezes spent three days on the road, the couple said, before arriving in New York just before midnight on June 27.
The family arrived at Port Authority and began searching for the shelter immigration officials in Texas had pointed out. After asking for directions several times, they found the shelter but were refused entry because the organization only assists domestic violence survivors, not entire families, according to Anabel.
It looked like the family would spend the night on the streets, until they struck up conversation with the owner of a bodega on 9th Avenue and 39th Street, according to the couple.
When the owner heard the family’s story, he offered to let them sleep in his truck for the night.
“He told me he didn’t want anything from me. That he would let me sleep in his car for the night and would help me find a place to go the next day,” Crisman said.
The next day the owner fed the family and let them hang out in his grocery store.
When Robert Gonzalez, a local resident and activist who frequents the store stopped by, the bodega owner asked Gonzalez to help the family, Gonzalez told CNN.
Gonzalez, who has been helping migrant Venezuelan families for the last two years, asked the bodega owner to take the family to Prevention Assistance and Temporary Housing Office in the Bronx. But the family was again rejected. The shelter does not allow dogs.
Gonzalez then reached out to a psychotherapist friend who helped the family start the process to register Max as a service dog, so it could join the family at shelters. In the meantime, a volunteer took Max, and the family spent the next two days waiting for the city’s homeless intake center to process their paperwork.
The family now lives in a shelter in Bushwick, Brooklyn. And even though they finally have a warm bed to sleep in, they still feel like they’re in limbo, they said, even though they’re grateful to have made it to the United States.
“The father can’t work,” Gonzalez said. “Until their next court date, they don’t have permission to work so they must rely on people like me who are willing to help. It’s worse for Venezuelan migrants because they’re orphans in a sense. There’s no Venezuelan embassy or consulates in the United States they can run to if they need help or a copy of a document from back home.”
This fall, Sebastian and Criszanyelis Urbaez will be a part of the roughly 1,000 children of asylum seekers whom the Department of Social Services expects to enroll in New York City public school, as part of Project Open Arms, a city initiative to help asylum-seeking families with academic and language-based needs.
The family’s next court date is in October 2023, when they will find out if they’ve been given permission to work legally.
In an interview with CNN, Manuel Castro, New York City’s commissioner of Immigrant Affairs, said the city is asking the federal government to step in and provide additional support to the city and expedite work permits for asylum seekers.
“Most of the families I’ve spoken to, they want to get to work, they don’t want to stay in shelters. They just want to contribute to society, they just want to be at peace,” Castro said.
Meanwhile, Max has become a certified service dog.
“We don’t think of him as just a dog. We see him as part of the family.” Anabel said. “The children wouldn’t have forgiven us if we left him behind.”
Argentina grounds Iran-linked Venezuelan cargo plane, lawmakers seek probe
DUBAI/BUENOS AIRES, June 12 (Reuters) – Argentine authorities have grounded an Iran-linked Venezuelan Boeing 747 cargo plane, a local opposition lawmaker and Iranian state media said on Sunday, in an unfolding drama that is throwing a spotlight on political undercurrents in Latin America.
The Emtrasur cargo plane, sold to Venezuela by Iran’s Mahan Air a year ago according to the Iranian airline, arrived in Buenos Aires on June 8, flight tracking data show. It was then seized by authorities, the lawmaker and Iranian media said.
Argentina’s government has not publicly confirmed the seizure, but an Interior Ministry document shared with Reuters said authorities had taken the action due to suspicions over the stated reason for the plane entering the country.
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Iran and Venezuela, which are both under U.S. sanctions, have close ties. The two countries on Saturday signed a 20-year cooperation plan. Argentina’s center-left President Alberto Fernandez has criticized U.S. sanctions against Venezuela.
Argentina’s government did not reply to Reuters queries seeking comment about the aircraft. Authorities in Venezuela did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
On Sunday, Argentine lower-house lawmaker Gerardo Milman, who has raised attention about the case in recent days, presented a complaint to a judge asking to fingerprint the crew and share the information with the Federal Intelligence Agency.
“Our information is that this is a plane that has come to conduct intelligence in Argentina,” said Milman, a member of the country’s Congressional Intelligence Commission.
According to the Interior Ministry document, shared with Reuters by Milman, 14 Venezuelans and 5 Iranians were traveling on the plane. It listed the names of those on board.
Argentina courts also have to rule on a habeas corpus filed by a lawyer for the crew to release the aircraft and have passports returned to those on board, Argentine media reported.
It was not immediately clear if the plane, with a tail sign of YV3531, was on a list of Iranian-linked aircraft under U.S. sanctions. Mahan Air has been under U.S sanctions since 2011 for its support for Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards.
“Ownership of the plane was transferred a year ago and it was sold to a Venezuelan company,” Mahan’s spokesman, Amir Hossein Zolanvari, told the official IRNA news agency.
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Reporting by Dubai Newsroom and Lucila Sigal in Buenos Aires; Additional reporting by Vivian Sequera; Writing by Alexander Vilelgas; Editing by Elaine Hardcastle and Chris Reese
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Britain sanctions Venezuelan President Maduro’s envoy Saab
LONDON, July 22 (Reuters) – Britain on Thursday sanctioned one of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s envoys, Alex Saab, in connection with an allegedly corrupt deal to obtain supplies for Maduro’s government-run food subsidy programme.
Saab, a Colombian national, is currently detained in Cape Verde facing extradition to the United States, which accuses him of helping Maduro’s government skirt U.S. sanctions imposed in 2019. read more
Britain said Saab had been sanctioned along with his associate Alvaro Pulido for exploiting two of Venezuela’s public programmes which were set up to supply poor Venezuelans with affordable foodstuffs and housing.
“They benefited from improperly awarded contracts, where promised goods were delivered at highly inflated prices,” the UK Foreign Office said in a statement. “Their actions caused further suffering to already poverty stricken Venezuelans, for their own private enrichment.”
Saab’s lawyers could not immediately be contacted but have previously called the U.S. charges “politically motivated.”
Venezuela’s foreign ministry responded in a statement that Britain was presenting itself as an “anti-corruption judge for the world, while acting as one of the main responsible parties for the theft of assets belonging to all Venezuelans.”
That was a reference to the Bank of England’s refusal to hand over nearly $1 billion in gold to Maduro’s government due to a dispute over whether the gold should go to opposition leader Juan Guaido, who Britain recognises as Venezuela’s legitimate president. read more
Saab was arrested last June in Cape Verde after Interpol issued a so-called red notice.
At the time of his arrest, Saab was en route to Iran to negotiate shipments of fuel and humanitarian supplies to Venezuela, his lawyers previously told Reuters. His plane had stopped in the archipelago nation off the coast of West Africa to refuel.
Also on Thursday Britain sanctioned Teodoro Obiang Mangue, the son of Equatorial Guinea’s president, for misappropriating millions of dollars which London said was spent on luxury mansions, private jets and a $275,000 glove worn by Michael Jackson. read more
Additional reporting by Brian Ellsworth in Caracas; Editing by William Maclean and Chris Reese
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Colombia will legalize undocumented Venezuelan migrants
BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — Colombia said Monday it will register hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan migrants and refugees currently in the country without papers, in a bid to provide them with legal residence permits and facilitate their access to health care and legal employment opportunities.
President Ivan Duque said that through a new temporary protection statute, Venezuelan migrants who are in the country illegally will be eligible for 10-year residence permits, while migrants who are currently on temporary residence will be able to extend their stay.
The new measure could benefit up to one million Venezuelan citizens who are currently living in Colombia without proper papers, as well as hundreds of thousands who need to extend temporary visas.
President Duque announced the protection measure in a stately government palace in Bogota while standing with Filippo Grandi, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
“As we take this historic and transcendental step for Latin America we hope other countries will follow our example,” Duque told a room full of ambassadors and diplomats, who were invited to witness the announcement.
Grandi said the new policy would improve the lives of hundreds of thousands of impoverished people and called it an “extraordinary gesture” of humanity, pragmatism and commitment to human rights.
Colombia’s government estimates that 1.8 million Venezuelans are currently living in the country, and that 55% of them don’t have proper residence papers. Most have arrived since 2015 to escape hyperinflation, food shortages and an increasingly authoritarian government.
Duque said that registering these undocumented immigrants and refugees would benefit Colombia’s security agencies and would also make the provision of social services, including coronavirus vaccines, more efficient.
The government said Venezuelans who arrive legally in Colombia within the next two years will also be allowed to apply for temporary protection.
The new policy comes after Donald Trump signed an executive order in the last days of his presidency that halted deportations of tens of thousands of Venezuelans living in the United States.
Colombia’s new temporary protection statute will be implemented as migrants leaving Venezuela find it harder to settle in other South American countries, due to land border closures and growing anti-immigrant sentiment.
In Ecuador, hundreds of Venezuelans are currently stuck along the country’s southern border following Peru’s decision to send tanks and troops to the area to stop illegal border crossings.
Other popular destinations for Venezuelan migrants include Panama and Chile, which have imposed visa requirements that make it harder for Venezuelans to move to those countries.
According to the United Nations, there are 4.7 million Venezuelan migrants and other refugees in other Latin American countries after fleeing the economic collapse and political divide in their homeland. Colombia is home to more than a third of them.
Duque said that while Colombia’s decision will provide some relief, he did not expect it to stop the Venezuelan exodus.
“If we want to stop this crisis countries have to reflect about how to end the dictatorship in Venezuela,” he said. “We have to think about how to set up a transitional government and organize free elections.”