President Trump is intensifying pressure on Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro by imposing sanctions on a bank jointly owned by Russian and Venezuelan government-owned enterprises, the Treasury Department announced Monday.
“The United States will take action against foreign financial institutions that sustain the illegitimate Maduro regime and contribute to the economic collapse and humanitarian crisis plaguing the people of Venezuela,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said.
Mnuchin’s team blacklisted Evrofinance Mosnarbank, a Moscow-based bank established by the late Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez in 2011 in coordination with two major state-owned Russian banks. Those institutions, VTB Bank and Gazprombank, have been sanctioned since 2014 in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. They have partnered with the Maduro regime to help Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, PdVSA, which is also laboring under U.S. sanctions as “an entity that has long been a vehicle for corruption, embezzlement, and money laundering by Maduro and his cronies,” as Treasury put it Monday.
“When the failed Venezuelan cryptocurrency, called the Petro, launched in 2018, Evrofinance emerged as the primary international financial institution willing to finance the Petro,” the Treasury bulletin said. “Evrofinance’s involvement in the Petro demonstrated Maduro’s hope that the Petro would allow Venezuela to circumvent U.S. financial sanctions.”
While Venezuelans have faced massive food shortages and energy blackouts, forcing millions to flee the country, Evrofinance’s assets grew by 50 percent last year.
Mnuchin’s announcement is the first follow through on a threat that White House national security adviser John Bolton made last week. “The United States is putting foreign financial institutions on notice that they will face sanctions for being involved in facilitating illegitimate transactions that benefit Nicolas Maduro and his corrupt network,” he said Wednesday. “We will not allow Maduro to steal the wealth of the Venezuelan people.”
“The illegitimate Maduro regime has profited off of the suffering of the Venezuelan people,” Mnuchin said in announcing the new sanctions, which block assets of the bank and its entities that fall within U.S. jurisdiction and locks the bank out of the American financial system.
The United States and dozens of other Western nations recognize interim president Juan Guaido as the legitimate leader of Venezuela. The opposition figure returned to the capital of Caracas last week after arranging humanitarian aid from neighboring countries and the United States, aid that Maduro blocked.
