BAKER NOTABLE SUBMISSION RE: VENEZUELA
>>5369381 (lb)
Some more background on Maduro's ex-VP Tereck El Aissami:
1) sauce: https://www.treasury.gov/press-center/press-releases/Pages/as0005.aspx
Treasury Sanctions Prominent Venezuelan Drug Trafficker Tareck El Aissami and His Primary Frontman Samark Lopez Bello
2/13/2017
Action Targets International Network of 13 Companies That Facilitate
Illicit Money Movements and Offshore Asset Holdings
WASHINGTON—Today, the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated Venezuelan national Tareck Zaidan El Aissami Maddah (El Aissami) as a Specially Designated Narcotics Trafficker pursuant to the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act (Kingpin Act) for playing a significant role in international narcotics trafficking. El Aissami is the Executive Vice President of Venezuela. El Aissami's primary frontman, Venezuelan national Samark Jose Lopez Bello (Lopez Bello), was also designated for providing material assistance, financial support, or goods or services in support of the international narcotics trafficking activities of, and acting for or on behalf of, El Aissami. OFAC further designated or identified as blocked property 13 companies owned or controlled by Lopez Bello or other designated parties that comprise an international network spanning the British Virgin Islands, Panama, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Venezuela.
As a result of today's action, U.S. persons are generally prohibited from engaging in transactions or otherwise dealing with these individuals and entities, and any assets the individuals and entities may have under U.S. jurisdiction are frozen.
2) sauce: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tareck_El_Aissami (I know wiki is shit, but it gives good starting points for digging)
Tareck Zaidan El Aissami Maddah is a Venezuelan politician serving as Minister of Industries and National Production since 14 June 2018. He previously was Minister of the Interior and Justice from 2008 to 2012, Governor of Aragua from 2012 to 2017 and Vice President of Venezuela from 2017 to 2018. While holding that office, El Aissami 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, May Maddah de El Aissami, 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. Following the news of his father's arrest and the raiding of his childhood home, seventeen-year-old El Aissami became disillusioned with the state of Venezuela. 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. 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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