>>2001572 (pb)
Important to remember who the VP of Venezuela is.
Tareck El Aissami
From Wiki (I know, I know):
Previously he was Minister of the Interior and Justice from 2008 to 2012, Governor of Aragua from 2012 to 2017 and Vice President of Venezuela from January 2017 to June 2018. El Aissami has faced allegations of participating in corruption, money laundering and drug trafficking.
El Aissami was born on 12 November 1974 in El Vigía, Mérida, Venezuela, where he spent his childhood. He is one of five children. His mother is Lebanese while his father, Zaidan El Amin El Aissami, also known as Carlos Zaidan, was a Druze immigrant from Jabal al-Druze in Syria. He was the head of a local Iraqi Ba'athist Party in Venezuela and had connections with leftist political movements in the Middle East. Another family member of El Aissami's involved in Ba'athism was his great-uncle, Shibli El Aissami, who was the Assistant Secretary General of the National Command of the Iraqi-dominated Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party.
El Aissami's father supported Hugo Chávez during the February 1992 Venezuelan coup d'état attempt and was arrested.[10][11][6] Following the news of his father's arrest and the raiding of his childhood home, seventeen-year-old El Aissami became troubled with the situation disillusioned with the state of Venezuela.[15][16] A quote from his father stuck with El Aissami for life, "No matter what happens, remember the capable men are the ones who write history, the incapable criticize it", with his father referring to Chávez as being able to rewrite history.[16] Following the arrest of El Aissami's father in 1992, his great-uncle Shibli El Aissami retired from politics in Iraq, remaining in the country until the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
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Since 2011, the Homeland Security Investigations branch of the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the United States Drug Enforcement Administration have investigated El Aissami for his alleged acts of money laundering in the Middle East, specifically in Lebanon. According to The Wall Street Journal, El Aissami has been under investigation by the United States for his alleged activities in drug trafficking since 2015. Rafael Isea, the preceding governor of Aragua, stated that El Aissami was allegedly paid off by drug kingpin Walid Makled (es) in order to receive drug shipments in Venezuela. Before being extradited to Venezuela Makled allegedly told DEA agents that from 2007 to 2012, he paid El Aissami's brother, Feras El Aissami, and told them to launder the money in the Venezuelan oil industry.
On 13 February 2017 El Aissami was sanctioned by the US Treasury Department under the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act. US officials accused him of facilitating drug shipments from Venezuela to Mexico and the US, freezing tens of millions of dollars of assets purportedly under El Aissami's control. A day later, Venezuela's opposition-controlled National Assembly voted in favour of opening an investigation into El Aissami's alleged involvement in drug trafficking. El Aissami has denied any criminal wrongdoing while President Maduro defended him saying "Venezuela will respond, step by step, with balance and force … They will retract and apologize publicly to our vice president", while also stating that El Aissami had arrested more than 100 drug traffickers, with 21 being extradited to the United States. In an open letter, published as an advertisement in the New York Times, El Aissami stated: "I have no assets or accounts in the United States or in any country of the world, and it is both absurd and pathetic that an American administrative body —without presenting any evidence— adopts a measure to freeze goods and assets that I do not own at all."