US removes former Venezuelan official from sanctions list

The US removed a former Venezuelan official from the list of sanctioned individuals, a move Biden officials pledged after a March meeting with President Nicolas Maduro aimed at coaxing him back to negotiations with political opponents. 

Carlos Erik Malpica Flores, a former national treasurer and vice president of Venezuela’s state oil company, was taken off the list of Specially Designated Nationals by the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, or OFAC, according to a notice published on its website Friday. Malpica Flores, the nephew of Maduro’s wife, Cilia Flores, was sanctioned in July of 2017 along with 12 other Venezuelans.

Removing Malpica Flores was among the options Biden officials laid out following a March trip to Caracas in which they met with Maduro in an effort to convince him to restart negotiations with the political opposition. Those talks were halted last year. 

The decision on Malpica Flores marks the first lifting of individual sanctions since the meeting. The US has also allowed Chevron Corp. to start direct talks with state oil company PDVSA and for Italy’s Eni SpA and Spain’s Repsol SA to ship Venezuelan oil to Europe.

Gerardo Blyde, lead negotiator for a bloc of opposition parties, said on Twitter that they have worked closely with the US “on specific actions aimed at resuming the negotiation process.” 

Representatives for the government’s Communications Ministry did not immediately reply to a request for comment. Maduro was traveling Friday in Azerbaijan as part of a tour of Eurasian countries, while his vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, met with Russia’s Foreign Affairs Ministry in Saint Petersburg.