The vice-president of Venezuela has accused the US of “imperialist aggression” after it slapped sanctions on him for allegedly trafficking drugs.<\/p>\n
Tareck El Aissami was described by the US treasury as a drug “kingpin” who worked with traffickers in Mexico and Colombia to ship drugs to America.<\/p>\n
Hitting back, he accused the US of “defamatory aggression”.<\/p>\n
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro demanded a public apology from the US for sanctioning his new deputy.<\/p>\n
The sanctions freeze Mr El Aissami’s assets in the US and bar him from entering the country.<\/p>\n
He is seen as a powerful figure within the governing party and has been entrusted by Mr Maduro with key powers normally held by the president, such as determining ministerial budgets and expropriating private companies.<\/p>\n
The US treasury accuses him of being in the pay of convicted Venezuelan drug lord Walid Makled<\/a> for protecting drug shipments.<\/p>\n “They’ll never be able to defeat our unbreakable resolution to be free forever,” Mr El Aissami said.<\/p>\n Sanctions were also imposed on wealthy Venezuelan businessman Samark Lopez, described as Mr El Aissami’s “primary frontman”.<\/p>\n Mr Lopez released a statement<\/a> saying he had not trafficked drugs.<\/p>\n Vice-President El Aissami is the highest-ranking Venezuelan official ever to be sanctioned by the US, which has not exchanged ambassadors with the country since 2010.<\/p>\n US counter-narcotics experts have long said that large amounts of cocaine transit from Colombia through Venezuela on to Europe and the US.<\/p>\n (This article was retrieved from BBC News)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The vice-president of Venezuela has accused the US of “imperialist aggression” after it slapped sanctions on him for allegedly trafficking drugs. Tareck El Aissami was described by the US treasury as a drug “kingpin” who worked with traffickers in Mexico and Colombia to ship drugs to America. Hitting back, he accused the US of “defamatory aggression”. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=552"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":556,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552\/revisions\/556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}