OFAC Removes Sanctions From Former Venezuelan Official

The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control removed sanctions on a former Venezuelan government official after he “broke ranks” with the Nicolas Maduro regime last week, OFAC said in a May 7 notice. OFAC said Manuel Ricardo Cristopher Figuera, the director general of Venezuela’s National Intelligence Service, was sanctioned in February as a member of the Venezuelan government. All of Cristopher’s property is now unblocked and transactions with him are allowed, the notice said.

OFAC’s said its decision to remove sanctions from Cristopher shows the U.S.’s “good faith” to ease pressure on people or entities that “take concrete and meaningful actions to restore democratic order, refuse to take part in human rights abuses, speak out against abuses committed by the illegitimate Maduro regime, or combat corruption in Venezuela.”

While it was not the first time the U.S. has removed sanctions on a Venezuelan individual, it was OFAC’s “first publicized removal,” said Brian Frey, a lawyer and former sanctions prosecutor at the Justice Department. Frey said the move is unlikely to influence other Venezuelan officials to abandoned the Maduro regime in the “very near term, but if the conflict drags on then it could start to be more effective.” Frey said because Venezuela is “on the brink of full-blown civil war,” sanction restrictions among individual government officials may not be their first concern. “But the impact will be felt as time goes by,” Frey said.