Venezuela halts talks, rounds up Citgo 6

Venezuela’s government said Saturday that it would halt negotiations with the opposition in retaliation for the extradition to the United States of a close ally of President Nicolas Maduro wanted on money laundering charges.

Jorge Rodriguez, who has been heading the government’s delegation in talks that started in August, said his team wouldn’t travel to Mexico City for the next scheduled round of talks with his U.S.-backed opponents, although he stopped short of saying the government was abandoning the talks altogether.

The announcement came hours after businessman Alex Saab was put on a U.S.-bound plane in Cape Verde after failing in a 16-month fight to prevent his extradition to face money laundering charges in Miami. Saab was arrested in the African archipelago while making a stop on the way to Iran for what Maduro’s government later described as a diplomatic humanitarian mission.

Rodriguez, standing in front of a giant sign reading “Free Alex Saab,” called his arrest an illegal “aggression” by the U.S., which has been pushing for years for Maduro’s removal.

Adding to the intrigue, Venezuelan security forces Saturday picked up six U.S. oil executives who have been under home arrest in another politically charged case.

The so-called Citgo 6, named for the Houston subsidiary of Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, were lured to Caracas in 2017 for a meeting when masked police busted into a conference room and took them into custody on embezzlement charges tied to a never-executed deal to refinance billions in Citgo bonds. They were later transferred to house arrest. All were sentenced to as much as 13 years in prison on corruption charges by a Venezuelan judge last November.

Bloomberg News reported that the men — Jose Pereira, Jose Luis Zambrano, Alirio Zambrano, Tomeu Vadell, Gustavo Cárdenas and Jorge Toledo — were taken to Venezuela intelligence

police headquarters, attributing the information to lawyers for the men.

U.S. authorities have been targeting Saab for years, believing he holds numerous secrets about how Maduro, the president’s family and his top aides siphoned off millions of dollars in government contracts for food and housing amid widespread hunger in oil-rich Venezuela.

In a statement Saturday, Venezuela’s government denounced the “kidnapping” of Saab by the U.S. government “in complicity with authorities in Cape Verde.”