CARACAS, VENEZUELA (Carlos Rossi, Energy Analytics Institute, 31.Jan.2024) — Although US sanctions imposed on Venezuelan individuals for corruption charges date as far back as the beginning of the first decade of this century, the origin of US sanctions against the nation of Venezuela date back to the Barack Obama administration in Mar. 2015 when it declared that: “Venezuela represents an unusual and extraordinary threat to the National Security and Foreign Policy of the United States”. The USA was crossed by two ongoing activities, one by the government itself: “We are deeply concerned by the Venezuelan Government ́s efforts to escalate intimidation of political opponents…Venezuela ́s problems cannot be solved by criminalizing dissent”. The ire of the US was further fouled when the government announced it had captured and jailed Americans, including a pilot for espionage activities.
The principal activity that provoked these sanctions occurred when it became clear to the US administration that the corruption of the Venezuelan government had spun out of control that it was not only contaminating its financial system with billions of corrupt money but that it was dragging down PDVSA, Venezuela’s national oil company, to a bottomless abyss of incompetence and bankruptcy because its revenues were being syphoned off to private off-shore accounts of government officials and cronies; drying out PDVSA out of investment revenue and could not pay its debts to its own foreign partners (US/Europe/Asian transnational oil companies), nor its debts to banks or to the bond holders.
