The United States has confiscated $800 million from senior Venezuelan socialist and alleged drug trafficker Diosdado Cabello, according to a Tuesday report from Miami journalist Óscar Haza.
Cabello, a close ally of socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro and Vice President of the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), was recently sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department for corruption, drug trafficking, and mineral smuggling, thus allowing authorities to freeze his American bank accounts and seize all his property.
“A total of $800 million has been seized and proven to belong to Diosdado Cabello,” Haza said on his Miami radio show, citing sources within the Trump administration reported on his radio program. “That could cover about two months of Venezuela’s debt service payments.”
“They have hit the heart of the engine room of his economic battleship, the product of drug trafficking and the business deals done for his benefit,” he continued.
The report, which has not been independently verified, comes weeks after the U.S. sanctioned Cabello as well as a handful of other senior Venezuelan officials, including Maduro.
“As of March 2017, Cabello seized drug loads from small-scale drug traffickers, and combined and exported them through a Venezuelan government-owned airport,” the U.S. Treasury said in a statement. “Cabello, along with President Maduro and others, divided proceeds from these narcotics shipments.”
However, Cabello dismissed the report as a baseless lie perpetuated by right-wingers.
“The right, in its desperate effort to create and believe its own lies, now is including my daughter. According to their news media, the United States took away $800 million from Diosdado Cabello and deported Daniella,” Cabello tweeted on Wednesday. “Another lie, another infamy. We will defeat them!”
“How lacking intelligence would I be if at this point I would have $800 million in the United States and that also, I would expose my daughter to travel to that country,” he continued. “A little more imagination, lords of lies. Make the effort of thinking please.”
In April, Cabello lost a lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal after they exposed his deep ties to drug trafficking, where they revealed that law enforcement agencies were investigating him over his alleged involvement with the Cartel de los Soles, one of the largest cocaine-trafficking organizations in the Western Hemisphere.
The 55-year-old politician is currently a member of the National Constituents Assembly, a fraudulent lawmaking body of unelected government supporters. He has previously served as Venezuela’s vice president under Hugo Chávez, as well as president of the country’s National Assembly before his party lost control of the lawmaking body in 2015.
Follow Ben Kew on Facebook, Twitter at @ben_kew, or email him at bkew@breitbart.com.
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