Chaotic Venezuela gets £6m foreign aid – with £160k to brutal police

BRITISH aid money has been used to help train elements of Venezuela’s brutal security services, it emerged yesterday.

Official documents show that ministers approved a decision to spend £160,000 of taxpayers’ money on training and ‘capacity building’ in the totalitarian state’s police and security services.

The money was part of a £5.8million aid package spent in the oil-rich state over the last four years. The aid programme even included help for Venezuela’s state oil industry, which is the main source of income for the country’s socialist regime.

The revelation is embarrassing for Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson who this week accused Venezuela’s Marxist president, Nicolas Maduro, of ‘ acting like a dictator of an evil regime’.

The existence of the scheme is also uncomfortable for senior Tories who have piled pressure on Jeremy Corbyn – who has previously lionised the Maduro regime – to condemn his Venezuelan ‘comrades’.

Last night the Foreign Office, which has responsibility for the project, suggested it could be halted, saying it would be ‘kept under review given the current situation in the country.’

Tory MPs condemned the spending as ‘ barmy’ and called for it to be stopped immediately. Peter Bone said there was no justification for giving aid to a country with bountiful oil reserves.

He added: ‘ Why are we giving overseas aid money to an oil-rich state that is effectively a dictatorship? It is completely barmy, and the Government should stop it immediately. If some of the money is going to help the police and security services then that is even worse, considering the footage we have all seen in recent days.’

Fellow Tory Nigel Evans added: ‘We cannot on the one hand have the Foreign Secretary describing the country as a dictatorship, and on the other be handing them aid money. Spending money on the police in a police state is unacceptable.’

Venezuela was branded a dictatorship this week following a massive power grab by President Maduro.

Police have launched a violent crackdown against protesters, and images have been beamed around the world of opposition leaders being arrested and locked up.

The regime’s security services have been a byword for brutality and corruption for years. In a recent verdict on Venezuela, the Human Rights Watch group said: ‘Security forces have arbitrarily detained and tortured protesters.’

Last year the watchdog accused Venezuela’s police and security services of extra-judicial killings, unlawful detention and human rights abuses. The report focused on raids on low income areas. In 2015, in 135 raids, 245 members of the public were killed. The Maduro regime claims it was driving out crime gangs.

Much of the aid money devoted to Venezuela is spent by the Foreign Office. The majority of it has gone on worthy, if unsuccessful, projects to promote human rights and decrease violence.

But the latest published figures reveal that £160,000 was also spent on training and ‘capacity building’ with Venezuela’s law enforcement services.

A Foreign Office spokesman said: ‘The UK’s work in Venezuela supports our long-term vision for the country to be more stable, democratic and prosperous, which is in the interest of the international community and our own national interest. The viability of work in Venezuela will be kept under review given the current situation in the country.

‘We do not pay any money directly to the government, or entities close to the government.’ Sources said the aid to the regime’s security services was focused mainly on helping the fight against organised crime and drug trafficking.

‘Protesters have been tortured’