US imposes sanctions on Venezuelan officials who Biden admin says obstructed fair election in country

(CNN) — The United States on Thursday imposed sanctions on 16 Venezuelan officials aligned with embattled President Nicolas Maduro for what the Biden administration claims is their role in obstructing a free and fair election in the country.

The sanctions come more than a month after Venezuela’s presidential election and days after opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez fled the country, which US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Sunday called “the direct result of the anti-democratic measures that Nicolás Maduro has unleashed on the Venezuelan people, including against González Urrutia and other opposition leaders, since the election.”

The new sanctions “include leaders of the Maduro-aligned National Electoral Council (CNE) and the Supreme Tribunal of Justice (TSJ) who impeded a transparent electoral process and the release of accurate election results, as well as the military, intelligence, and government officials responsible for intensifying repression through intimidation, indiscriminate detentions, and censorship,” a press release from the Treasury Department said. Those officials were appointed by Maduro, who was sanctioned in 2017.

At the same time, the State Department “is imposing new visa restrictions on a significant number of Maduro-aligned officials who’ve undermined the electoral process in Venezuela, and are responsible for acts of repression,” a senior administration official told reporters Thursday.

“We are taking these actions today because it has become abundantly clear to us not only that Edmundo González Urrutia won the most votes in Venezuela’s presidential election on July 28th, but also that Maduro and his representatives are intent on denying this fact, and instead seek to cling to power at all costs,” the official said.

The official added that they believe the sanctions are “an important step in shaping the overall context of the political trajectory in Venezuela.” They described them as being imposed as part of a broader campaign with allies to pressure Maduro to respect the results of the July 28 election.

The US has acknowledged Gonzalez as being the candidate who received the most votes in that election but has not formally recognized him as president-elect of Venezuela.

Venezuela rejected the sanctions “in the strongest terms” later on Thursday, describing them as “unilateral, illegitimate and illegal coercive measures.”

“The wrongly designated ‘sanctions,’ which have been shamefully promoted by the fascist extreme right, break and violate agreements signed in Qatar and seek to impose on an entire country and its institutions policies of regime change as part of the Monroe Doctrine,” the Venezuelan foreign ministry said in a statement on Thursday.

“There is clear evidence that Mr. González Urrutia won the most votes in this election, and therefore that fact needs to be respected and validated by Venezuelan authorities,” the official said Thursday.

The US “has sanctioned over 140 Venezuelan individuals and 100 Venezuelan entities” overall and has imposed sanctions “on nearly 2,000 Venezuelan individuals for their role in undermining democracy, significant corruption and human rights violations,” the official said. However, those sanctions appear to have done little to change Maduro’s behavior.

CNN’s Ivonne Valdés and Osmary Hernández contributed reporting.

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