OFAC Sanctions Maduro's Son

The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned Nicolas “Nicolasito” Ernesto Maduro Guerra, the son of Nicolas Maduro, for being a government official of the “illegitimate” Venezuelan Maduro regime, Treasury said in a June 28 press release. Treasury said the younger Maduro is a member of Venezuela’s National Constituent Assembly, which tries to “rewrite the Venezuelan constitution and dissolve Venezuelan state institutions.”

OFAC previously designated eight other people involved in organizing the assembly and the assembly's leader, Diosdado Cabello Rondon, the press release said. The assembly was “created through an undemocratic process instigated by Maduro’s government to subvert the will of the Venezuelan people,” Treasury said.

Maduro the younger, who was placed on OFAC’s Specially Designated Nationals List, has contributed to Venezuelan “propaganda and censorship efforts,” Treasury said, including censorship of “Venezuela’s telecommunications infrastructure.” In 2014 he was also named the head of the Corps of Inspectors of the Presidency, the press release said.

“Maduro relies on his son Nicolasito and others close to his authoritarian regime to maintain a stranglehold on the economy and suppress the people of Venezuela,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement. “Treasury will continue to target complicit relatives of illegitimate regime insiders profiting off of Maduro’s corruption.”