The region of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro freed two American citizens, identified as an oil executive and a tourist, late Tuesday night following a meeting between the socialist leader and a delegation sent by President Joe Biden.
Maduro confirmed that the American government representatives had arrived at Miraflores, the Venezuelan presidential palace, this weekend, for a “respectful” conversation whose contents Maduro did not discuss. Maduro has not been the legitimate president of Venezuela since 2019, when the federal legislature, the National Assembly, used its constitutional power to swear in Interim President Juan Guaidó in light of the rigged elections of May 2018. The United States formally recognizes Guaidó, and not Maduro, as Venezuela’s head of state, leaving unclear on what grounds the Biden delegation met with Maduro this weekend.
While Maduro did not elaborate on what he discussed with the Americans, multiple major corporate media outlets reported over the weekend that Biden sent representatives to Caracas to discuss the possibility of buying Venezuelan oil to offset planned sanctions on Russia. Biden confirmed in remarks on Tuesday that America would stop buying oil from Russia, sending already skyrocketing gasoline prices soaring nationwide.
Venezuela is a close ally to Russia and owes the Russian government billions of dollars, meaning any profit Maduro makes from selling oil to America would likely go towards paying that debt and enriching Russia – negating the point of ending Russian oil imports to America.
In a statement late Tuesday, Biden confirmed that Maduro had agreed to free two Americans: Gustavo Cárdenas, a former vice president at the Venezuelan-owned U.S. oil corporation Citgo, and Jorge Fernández, and Cuban-American tourist arrested on charges of “terrorism” in February 2021 for possessing a small camera-equipped drone.
“Cardenas was arrested in 2017 as part of the so-called CITGO-6, and he has endured five years of hardship and imprisonment at the hands of an unjust system. Fernandez was arrested last year on spurious charges,” Biden said. “These men are fathers who lost precious time with their children and everyone they love, and their families have suffered every day of their absence.”
“Unjustly holding Americans captive is always unacceptable. And even as we celebrate the return of Cardenas and Fernandez, we also remember the names and the stories of every American who is being unjustly held against their will,” Biden concluded, “in Venezuela, in Russia, in Afghanistan, Syria, China, Iran, and elsewhere around the world. My Administration will keep fighting to bring them all home.”
The statement did not mention any reason for Venezuela freeing the men or any negotiations between the two countries, leaving unanswered what, if anything, Maduro demanded for their freedom.
Cárdenas is one of several Citgo executives known as the “Citgo 6” detained in 2017 and sentenced to between nine and 13 years in prison for “embezzlement” after traveling to Venezuela on the invitation of the socialist regime.
The Venezuelan government has not commented on the release of the two men at press time. The development corresponds with Maduro discussing the first major meeting between the dictator and American government representatives since Biden, who Maduro once accused of personally ordering his assassination, became president.
“I want to remark that, last Saturday night, a delegation from the government of the United States of America arrived,” Maduro said on national television on Monday, according to the Venezuelan news outlet Runrunes. “I received it here in the presidential palace the way I have received on other occasions delegations from other world governments.”
Maduro celebrated the Americans’ “positive agenda” and claimed that “conversations will continue,” but offered no insight into what the topics discussed were. He also did not address the many reports over the weekend that the Biden administration was seeking to buy Venezuelan oil.
“The Biden administration is seeking to ease oil sanctions on Venezuela as part of a broader U.S. strategy to temper oil prices that have skyrocketed because of Russia’s war in Ukraine, according to people familiar with the matter,” the Wall Street Journal reported this weekend. “U.S. officials began rare face-to-face meetings with Venezuelan officials in Caracas over the weekend, with a view to allowing Venezuelan crude oil back on to the open international market, these people said.”
The administration of President Donald Trump sanctioned Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), the state oil company, in 2019 in response to years of human rights abuses against pro-democracy dissidents and the National Assembly recognizing Maduro as having “ruptured the democratic order” with the rigged 2018 presidential election. PDVSA, once a giant in the OPEC country, has struggled to sustain its business as the socialist regime handed critical roles in the company to its cronies, rather than experts. As of 2020, oil production in Venezuela was at 1940s levels.
The reported plan to import Venezuelan oil to offset losses from sanctioning Venezuela’s patron state Russia has raised alarm. Colombian President Iván Duque ominously warned in remarks in Texas this week that Biden “will have to reflect about” a potential windfall to Maduro and lamented that buying Venezuelan oil would jeopardize a longtime stance against that dictatorship.
“The United States has had a position about this we have shared, which is to call things by their name. And that government is a dictatorship,” Duque said of the Maduro regime.
Colombia and Venezuela are neighbors and Bogotá has accused Venezuela of funding communist narco-terrorist groups in the country since late dictator Hugo Chávez ran the country. Chávez overtly maintained ties with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a Marxist terrorist organization that the Biden administration delisted last year, baffling Duque.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) also questioned the wisdom of buying Venezuelan oil following reports that Biden had planned to do so, calling the now-confirmed meeting between Biden representatives and Maduro a “huge PR boost … And a demoralizing betrayal of those who have risked everything to oppose Maduro & weren’t even told this was happening.”
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