SAN LUIS POTOSÍ, Mexico.- Congressmen Mario Diaz-Balart and Debbie Wasserman Schultz They proposed This Thursday, the U.S. Department of Justice will increase the reward for the capture of dictator Nicolás Maduro from $15 million to $100 million.
Díaz-Balart and Wasserman Schultz, co-chairs of the Congressional Caucus for Democracy in Venezuela, noted in a statement that the increase would be financed with assets already seized from Maduro and his regime.
The proposal was also supported by Congressmen Chris Smith, Carlos A. Giménez, Jenniffer González-Colon, María Elvira Salazar, Mike Waltz and Darren Soto.
The reward would be paid for by the federal government using seized assets already being held by Maduro, regime officials and their co-conspirators, not taxpayer funds.
@RepDWStweets and I led a bipartisan effort to increase the bounty on dictator Maduro from $15M to $100M. The bounty would be paid using assets seized from Maduro and his regime, not taxpayer funds.
Maduro must be held accountable…
— Mario Díaz-Balart (@MarioDB) September 19, 2024
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in South Florida, which has filed dozens of criminal charges against high-level regime officials, the seizures amount to approximately $450 million.
Florida Senators Rick Scott and Marco Rubio introduced the companion bill in the Senate.
In their remarks, they stressed that since the elections, the Maduro regime “has only intensified its brutal repression.” “Arbitrary detentions, torture and politically motivated persecution have reportedly intensified under Maduro’s oppressive regime.”
According to the statement by the US politicians, the reward could lead to Maduro’s conviction and would reinforce “the already decisive actions taken by the Biden-Harris Administration to target the criminal enterprise behind Venezuela’s electoral theft and the violent repression of its people.”
In a recent report, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) He described the post-election panorama in Venezuela as “chilling.”
The board denounced the arbitrary arrests of opponents and the harassment of Venezuelans who reject the results announced by the pro-government National Electoral Council (CNE), which accredited the victory at the polls to the ruler Nicolás Maduro without presenting the electoral records that would support the fact.
Almost two months after the elections, the CNE has not shown the breakdown of the results while accusing the PUD of publishing false minutes.
Documents published by the coalition’s main platform, after being collected by volunteers at the polling stations, show that Edmundo González Urrutia was the winner of the elections by a wide margin.
The incident sparked a fierce persecution of opposition leaders and ended with González’s exile under duress from Maduro.
However, from Spain, he appealed for dialogue and reiterated that only in this way will they be able to “reunite” as compatriots.
