Biden raises bounty for Venezuela’s Maduro to $25 million

BOGOTA, Colombia – The Biden administration said Friday that it was offering $25 million for information leading to the arrest of Nicolás Maduro, the president of Venezuela, after he assumed a third term in office despite evidence suggesting that he lost Venezuela’s recent election.

The announcement was a retaliatory measure by Washington, which does not recognize Maduro as the rightful president of Venezuela. Maduro has presented no evidence that he won a July election, while his opponent Edmundo González has presented thousands of publicly available vote tallies that he says indicate he easily won the most votes.

The United States has said that González is the president-elect of Venezuela and has urged Maduro to step aside.

The Biden administration also announced that it was extending protections for roughly 600,000 Venezuelan migrants living in the United States with temporary protected status. The measure allows those who apply to stay for an extra 18 months.

John Kirby, a spokesperson for the National Security Council, said the decision to raise the bounty on Maduro was part of “a concerted message of solidarity with the Venezuelan people,” meant “to further elevate international efforts to maintain pressure on Mr. Maduro and his representatives.”

Such rewards are widely considered more symbolic than a serious effort to effect an arrest. The $25 million bounty is an increase from a $15 million reward set by the Trump administration in 2020.

But that measure did nothing to sway Maduro from taking a third six-year term. Some critics have even argued that this reward strategy has further entrenched Maduro by making it harder for him to leave power.

If he leaves the presidency, he would be extremely vulnerable to arrest.

The extension of temporary protected status for Venezuelan migrants was described by a representative of the Biden administration as an effort to support the Venezuelan people.

The program was signed into law by George H.W. Bush to help people who could not return to their countries because of natural disaster or armed conflict. President-elect Donald Trump, who will be sworn in Jan. 20, has vowed to end the program.

The Biden representative, who gave a news briefing to reporters on the condition of anonymity, said that high levels of crime and violence – as well as barriers to accessing food, medicine, health care, water, electricity and fuel – keep many people from being able to safely return.

In 2020, Maduro was indicted in the United States, accused in a decades-long narco-terrorism and international cocaine trafficking conspiracy.

The Justice Department’s formal accusation against a foreign head of state was an unusual move that signaled the United States was likely to take an increasingly hard line against Maduro.

It was at that point that the State Department announced the initial $15 million bounty. Maduro remains under indictment.

Officials from the Biden administration said Friday that the United States would also offer $25 million for information leading to the capture of the country’s interior minister, Diosdado Cabello, up from $10 million.

And the State Department added another reward: $15 million for help with detention of Venezuela’s defense minister, Vladimir Padrino López.

Just minutes after Maduro was sworn in Friday for another term, the U.S. Treasury Department also said it was placing new sanctions on eight Venezuelan officials, adding to about 180 Maduro allies and other Venezuelans already under sanction.

The measures freeze assets that the officials have in the United States.

“The United States and its allies in the region have pushed Maduro to commit to a democratic transition,” Bradley T. Smith, a Treasury official, said in a statement. “Instead, Maduro and his representatives have continued their violent repression in an attempt to maintain power and have ignored the Venezuelan people’s calls for democratic accountability.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.