Venezuelan officials might face US sanctions for profiting from food shortages that have exacerbated hunger in the South American country.
The calls by members of US Congress on both sides of the aisle come in response to an Associated Press (AP) investigation that found trafficking in hard-to-find food has become big business in Venezuela, with the military at the heart of the graft.
Embattled Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has given the military increasingly broad control over the food supply as shortages have led to widespread malnutrition this year.
Photo: AP
“When the military is profiting off of food distribution while the Venezuelan people increasingly starve, corruption has reached a new level of depravity that cannot go unnoticed,” said Democratic Senator Ben Cardin, the ranking member of the US Committee on Foreign Relations.
The AP report published last month detailed a chain of dirty dealing by the Venezuelan military, including kickbacks to generals for food contracts and bribes to move food out of the port. Some of the food is purchased in the US and some of the bribes passed through the US banking system.
US prosecutors are investigating senior Venezuelan officials, including members of the military, for laundering riches from food contracts through the US financial system, the AP learned from four people with direct knowledge of the probes.
No charges have been brought.
US Senator Marco Rubio, a Republican, said US President Donald Trump should take immediate action to sanction the top officials named in the report.
“This should be one of President Trump’s first actions in office,” said Rubio, who is chairman of the US Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee that oversees Latin America.
The report cited documents and testimony from business owners who pointed to Venezuelan Minister of Food General Rodolfo Marco Torres and former Venezuelan minister of food General Carlos Osorio, as key figures involved in fraudulent food imports.
Neither official responded to requests for comment, but in the past, both have dismissed charges of corruption as empty accusations propagated by political opponents.
US Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Republican, said she is urging the US Department of State and the US Department of the Treasury to apply sanctions to Marco Torres and Osorio, as well as anyone else getting rich off Venezuela’s food shortages.
She is also asking that government agencies ensure US companies are not doing business directly with any Venezuelan business owners fronting for corrupt officials.
In 2014, former US president Barack Obama’s administration, at the urging of Rubio and Menendez, froze US assets and denied visas for top Venezuelan officials accused of drug trafficking and of human rights violations during a wave of anti-government protests.
Maduro responded by calling the US lawmakers “terrorists” bent on destabilizing the oil-rich nation, and banned them from Venezuela.
Venezuelan lawmaker Carlos Berrizbeitia, who sits on the congressional audit committee, said sanctions or not, the opposition would do all it could to stop officials from participating in food trafficking.
“We welcome help from any country interested in investigating corruption in Venezuela, but we also have to keep up pressure on our own institutions to make sure they function properly,” he said. “We need to do everything possible to ensure they don’t rob a single dollar more from the food budget while the country is going hungry and people are eating from the trash.”
Kehinde Sanni spends his days smoothing out dents and repainting scratched bumpers in a modest autobody shop in Lagos. He has never left Nigeria, yet he speaks glowingly of Burkina Faso military leader Ibrahim Traore. “Nigeria needs someone like Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. He is doing well for his country,” Sanni said. His admiration is shaped by a steady stream of viral videos, memes and social media posts — many misleading or outright false — portraying Traore as a fearless reformer who defied Western powers and reclaimed his country’s dignity. The Burkinabe strongman swept into power following a coup in September 2022
‘FRAGMENTING’: British politics have for a long time been dominated by the Labor Party and the Tories, but polls suggest that Reform now poses a significant challenge Hard-right upstarts Reform UK snatched a parliamentary seat from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labor Party yesterday in local elections that dealt a blow to the UK’s two establishment parties. Reform, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage, won the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England by just six votes, as it picked up gains in other localities, including one mayoralty. The group’s strong showing continues momentum it built up at last year’s general election and appears to confirm a trend that the UK is entering an era of multi-party politics. “For the movement, for the party it’s a very, very big
ENTERTAINMENT: Rio officials have a history of organizing massive concerts on Copacabana Beach, with Madonna’s show drawing about 1.6 million fans last year Lady Gaga on Saturday night gave a free concert in front of 2 million fans who poured onto Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro for the biggest show of her career. “Tonight, we’re making history... Thank you for making history with me,” Lady Gaga told a screaming crowd. The Mother Monster, as she is known, started the show at about 10:10pm local time with her 2011 song Bloody Mary. Cries of joy rose from the tightly packed fans who sang and danced shoulder-to-shoulder on the vast stretch of sand. Concert organizers said 2.1 million people attended the show. Lady Gaga
SUPPORT: The Australian prime minister promised to back Kyiv against Russia’s invasion, saying: ‘That’s my government’s position. It was yesterday. It still is’ Left-leaning Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday basked in his landslide election win, promising a “disciplined, orderly” government to confront cost-of-living pain and tariff turmoil. People clapped as the 62-year-old and his fiancee, Jodie Haydon, who visited his old inner Sydney haunt, Cafe Italia, surrounded by a crowd of jostling photographers and journalists. Albanese’s Labor Party is on course to win at least 83 seats in the 150-member parliament, partial results showed. Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s conservative Liberal-National coalition had just 38 seats, and other parties 12. Another 17 seats were still in doubt. “We will be a disciplined, orderly
RSS