The United States on Thursday issued new sanctions targeting Venezuela, imposing curbs on three nephews of President Nicolas Maduro’s wife, as well as six crude oil tankers and shipping companies linked to them, as Washington ramps up pressure on Caracas.
The action came as the U.S. executes a large-scale military buildup in the southern Caribbean and as U.S. President Donald Trump campaigns for Maduro’s ouster. On Wednesday, Trump said the U.S. had seized a sanctioned oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela.
The U.S. Treasury Department, in a statement, said it imposed sanctions on six shipping companies moving Venezuelan oil, as well as six crude oil tankers that it said “have engaged in deceptive and unsafe shipping practices and continue to provide financial resources that fuel Maduro’s corrupt narco-terrorist regime.”
Four of the tankers, including the 2002-built H. Constance and the 2003-built Lattafa, are Panama-flagged, with the other two flagged by the Cook Islands and Hong Kong.
The targeted vessels are supertankers that recently loaded crude in Venezuela, according to state oil company PDVSA’s internal shipping documents.
Franqui Flores and Efrain Antonio Campo Flores, nephews of Venezuelan first lady Cilia Flores, were also hit with sanctions. The two were dubbed the “narco nephews” after their arrest in Haiti in 2015 in a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration sting operation.