The United States announced on Thursday it was imposing sanctions on 16 Venezuelan government officials appointed by the country’s autocratic president, Nicolás Maduro, in response to the disputed presidential election on July 28.
The past year saw months of repression leading up to the election, which was followed by a brutal crackdown in response to international and national criticism of the results.
On Election Day Mr. Maduro claimed victory without releasing a breakdown of results. He has yet to do so. The opposition has published thousands of receipts from voting stations, representing over 80 percent of the vote, showing that their candidate Edmundo González won by a wide margin.
A senior U.S. administration official, in a call with journalists on Thursday, said it was clear that Mr. González had won more votes and that Mr. Maduro’s government was denying that fact and trying to cling to power at all costs.
According to the conditions of the call, the official discussing the Biden administration’s actions could not be named in order to discuss sensitive diplomatic matters.
Who is being sanctioned?
The list includes officials from the country’s electoral authority and supreme court, justice system, legislature and security forces. They are now added to a list of hundreds of Venezuelan officials who have been sanctioned by the Treasury Department in recent years, including Mr. Maduro.
The individuals include the judge and prosecutor who authorized an arrest warrant for Mr. González, which the senior administration official said was politically motivated and unjustified.
Mr. González fled to Spain last weekend because opposition officials said he had feared for his life.
How do the sanctions work?
Under these sanctions, bank accounts and any other assets owned by the individuals in the United States will be frozen, and any U.S. citizens or people in the United States are prohibited from any financial transactions with the sanctioned individuals. The individuals are also prohibited from traveling to the U.S.
When it comes to sanctions on individuals in Venezuela, “their effectiveness at best has been limited,” said Mariano de Alba, a senior adviser for the International Crisis Group.
What other sanctions has the U.S. imposed?
The United States has sanctioned some Venezuelan officials for years, but the Trump administration strengthened the sanctions regime significantly after accusing Mr. Maduro of committing fraud in a presidential election in 2018.
Those sanctions have hobbled the country’s oil industry, a crucial source of income for Mr. Maduro’s government, and the autocratic leader has long sought to lift them.
Last October, after the Venezuelan government pledged to hold free and fair elections, the United States temporarily lifted some of the oil sanctions as a sign of good will.
The U.S. partially reinstated those sanctions in April after the Maduro government took steps to hinder a free election, but said it would allow some oil companies to continue operations in Venezuela.
What have they accomplished?
Some economists say sanctions are partially responsible for Venezuela’s economic contraction since 2012 and are a major factor driving the exodus of hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans that have arrived at the United States border in the last three years.
But even as they caused economic suffering for many Venezuelans, they have failed at the stated goal of forcing Mr. Maduro from office.
Some companies, including Reliance Industries, an Indian multinational, have already taken advantage of the sanctions relief the Biden administration provided earlier this year and have started importing oil from Venezuela.
The senior administration official pushed back at the notion that sanctioning individuals is ineffective and said that the move could prompt the 16 government officials to reflect on their support for Mr. Maduro.
He also disputed the assertion that efforts at diplomacy have failed, and said that the results that the Maduro administration published on election night were not widely accepted globally thanks to the work of the U.S. and its regional partners.
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