U.S. court gives $153 million to Miami man jailed in Venezuela

A federal judge in Miami has awarded $153 million in damages to an exiled Venezuelan lawyer and his family. Carlos Marrón had been lured back home by his father’s kidnapping only to end up imprisoned for two years on trumped-up charges of working as a “financial terrorist” undermining President Nicolás Maduro’s rule.

Marrón brought the lawsuit after fleeing Venezuela and describing to The Associated Press the beatings, asphyxiation and other abuse that he claims to have suffered while detained.

The United Nations’ Human Rights Council determined he had been arbitrarily detained for allegedly operating a website that published the black-market exchange rate of Venezuela’s erratic bolivar for U.S. dollars, something that the socialist government considered a crime.

The ruling issued Monday is the second of its kind in recent months targeting Maduro’s government over its alleged ties to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia under a little used federal law that allows American victims of foreign terror groups to seize the assets of their victimizers. In September, another federal judge awarded $73 million to the family of a prominent Maduro opponent who died after falling from the 10th floor of a building belonging to Venezuela’s intelligence services in what the U.S. court likened to “a murder for hire.”

As in the earlier case, Marrón in his lawsuit accused Maduro of heading the Cartel of the Suns, a purported drug-smuggling ring that involves top Venezuelan officials and guerrillas from the FARC — a designated terrorist group under U.S. law — and allegedly sends 200 metric tons of cocaine from Venezuela into the U.S. each year.

Judge Federico Moreno issued a default judgment against Maduro and five other insiders — including Attorney General Tarek William Saab and former Supreme Court President Maikel Moreno — for failing to respond to the lawsuit.

Marrón, 45, was arrested by the Venezuelan military counterintelligence unit in April 2018 without a warrant upon his arrival to Caracas’ international airport. He had been forced to travel to Venezuela from Miami — his home for the previous decade — upon learning that his father had been detained by state officials.

It was an elaborate trap seeking to punish Marrón for a website domain, dolarpro.com, he had bought years earlier as a business prospect but says he never developed. Under a friend’s stewardship, the website began publishing news and information on the nation’s blackmarket exchange rate, which varied vastly from official figures.

Saab likened Marrón’s actions to “mass murder.”