US claims it has seized $700 million of Nicolás Maduro’s assets

The U.S. Embassy in Caracas, Venezuela, posted on its social media account Wednesday that U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi had announced the seizure of assets worth $700 million from Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, including “mansions, cars, planes, and jewelry.” The post includes a brief excerpt from an interview with Bondi on the conservative Fox News channel, in which the attorney general explains the reasons for the seizure.

“This is organized crime, no different than the mafia, and Maduro-related assets are over $700 million in total, which we have already seized; yet, his reign of terror continues,” Bondi explains in a clip of the interview posted on the network’s website Wednesday.

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US claims to have seized $700 million of Nicolás Maduro's assets

On August 7, Bondi offered a $50 million reward for the arrest of Maduro, whom Washington links to the Sinaloa Cartel and accuses of being one of the world’s biggest drug traffickers. A day later, President Donald Trump ordered the U.S. army to combat foreign cartels, potentially also operating overseas, resurrecting the ghost of the interventionist Monroe Doctrine, a notorious memory in Latin America.

“These assets [Maduro’s] include two multi-million-dollar jets,” the attorney general continued. “Multiple homes, a mansion in the Dominican [Republic], multiple multi-million-dollar homes in Florida, a horse farm, cars — nine vehicles, I believe — millions of dollars in jewelry and cash. Yet, this organized crime operation continues to function,” Bondi concludes in the interview, intended to redouble the pressure on the Chavista regime.

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