According to a January 19 press release, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) “designated three individuals, fourteen entities, and six vessels for their ties to a network attempting to evade United States sanctions on Venezuela’s oil sector.” According to OFAC, the Maduro regime is continuing to use “Petroleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PdVSA) as its primary conduit for corruption to exploit and profit from Venezuela’s natural resources.”
This action builds on “OFAC’s June 18, 2020 designations targeting Libre Abordo, S.A. de C.V. (Libre Abordo) and a wider Mexico-based network involved in the illicit sale of Venezuelan oil. Today’s action targets additional orchestrators and facilitators with ties to the Mexico network who have conspired with Maduro’s oil minister, Tareck El Aissami Maddah (El Aissami), and indicted money launderer Alex Nain Saab Moran (Saab) to broker the sale of hundreds of millions of dollars of Venezuelan oil.”