The United States imposed on Thursday financial sanctions on three nephews of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, whom it accuses of having links to drug trafficking.
The Treasury Department included Efrain Antonio Campo Flores, Francisco Flores de Freitas and Carlos Erik Malpica Flores, all of them related to Maduro’s wife, Cilia Flores, in the list of sanctioned individuals.
US sanctions Maduro’s nephews
Trump again sanctions Maduro’s narco nephews who had been released by Biden, also sanctions a businessman linked to the Chavista regime and six oil companies.
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The three are part of a battery of sanctions by the Donald Trump Administration that also affects the Venezuelan oil sector, including a businessman and six shipping companies, and blocking six vessels.
The Treasury Department said in a statement that Campo Flores and Flores de Freitas, known as the “narco-brinos,” were arrested in Haiti in 2015 for drug trafficking and convicted in the United States in 2016.
The previous administration of Joe Biden granted them a pardon in October 2022 as part of an exchange with the government of Nicolás Maduro and they returned to Venezuela, from where, according to Washington, they resumed drug trafficking activities in 2025.
According to the Treasury, Malpica Flores, the third of the nephews, was vice president of the state-owned oil company PDVSA and was sanctioned in 2017, but in 2022 the Biden Administration removed the sanctions to facilitate an agreement with Maduro for democratic elections.
Among the others sanctioned is also Ramón Carretero Napolitano, a Panamanian businessman who, according to Washington, “has participated in lucrative contracts with the Maduro regime”.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent explained that the sanctions serve to undo “the Biden Administration’s failed attempt to reach an agreement with Maduro that enabled his dictatorial control.”
The State Department said in a statement that those sanctioned support “the corrupt and illegitimate Maduro regime in Venezuela”.
These sanctions are a new step in Trump’s pressure strategy on Maduro, after having seized on Wednesday, December 10, an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela and having destroyed numerous vessels in the Caribbean that, according to Washington, were part of a drug trafficking operation linked to the Venezuelan government.
With information from EFE
