Gustavo Cárdenas and Jorge Toledo were released under house arrest Thursday night, days after a humanitarian visit to Caracas by former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson and a team of non-governmental negotiators.
Richardson said in a statement that it is “a positive and important first step” and thanked Maduro for the gesture, while calling for the release of the six detained oil executives. It is not the first time that the men have been arrested at their home, but negotiators said they hope that this time, the release from prison is ultimately a precursor to their release from Venezuela.
His move to house arrest follows President Donald Trump’s statements last month that he would consider meeting with Maduro, during which he downplayed his earlier decision to recognize opposition leader Juan Guaidó as the legitimate leader of Venezuela.
Days later, the President withdrew those comments, tweeting: “My administrator has always sided with FREEDOM and FREEDOM and against the oppressive Maduro regime! I would only meet with Maduro to discuss one thing: a peaceful exit power!”
The “Citgo 6” as they are known: Cárdenas, Toledo, Tomeu Vadell, Alirio José Zambrano, José Luis Zambrano and José Ángel Pereira, have been detained in Venezuela without trial since November 2017, when they received a call from the giant’s boss Venezuelan oil tanker PDVSA summoning them to Caracas for a last-minute budget meeting.
When they arrived, armed and masked security officers arrested them on charges of embezzling funds stemming from a never-executed proposal to refinance some $ 4 billion in Citgo bonds by offering a 50% stake in the company as collateral. Maduro himself accused them of “treason”, although they have not been accused of that crime.
Long before the global pandemic put pressure on financial systems around the world, Venezuela faced a severe shortage of food, medicine and fuel in dealing with inflation that most economists attribute to years of mismanagement and corruption . More than 3.5 million Venezuelans have fled their homes to escape the country’s implosive economy.
Families of the “Citgo 6s,” five of them US citizens and all with deep roots in Texas and Louisiana, complain that the men are being held in inhumane conditions, sharing overcrowded cells in a military counterintelligence prison, and suffering a loss of severe weight in a country plagued by food shortages.
The case has largely faded as Venezuela has fallen further into turmoil and relations between him and the United States have been torn apart by the Trump administration’s strong support for opposition leader Guaidó in his battle to overthrow Maduro.
Little support
In January last year, the United States imposed sanctions on Venezuelan oil giant PDVSA, in what the Treasury Department said was an effort to ensure that oil revenues flow to Guaidó and not to the Maduro government. A month later, Guaidó appointed a new board to manage Citgo, the eighth largest refinery in the United States and which until the acquisition had been a subsidiary of PDVSA.
Richardson and his team have been working to secure the release of the men for several months at the request of the families.
In another case, two former Green Berets were among the more than 100 people arrested earlier this year in Venezuela in connection with a plan to seize the presidential palace, capture Maduro, and bring him back to the United States. The status of his arrest was not immediately clear.
The White House and the Department of Defense have denied the United States’ involvement in the planned raid.
This is a breaking story and will be updated.
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