The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) on Wednesday imposed sanctions on four companies and four tankers aiding Venezuela’s socialist Maduro regime evade U.S. oil sanctions.
Some of the now-sanctioned four vessels are part of the Maduro regime’s shadow fleet, which the rogue and illegitimate narco-terrorist regime increasingly depends on to evade U.S. sanctions and generate revenue for its destabilizing operations.
OFAC identified the four vessels as the Nord Star, the Rosalind (a.k.a. Lunar Tide), the Della, and the Valiant. OFAC also identified and sanctioned the vessel’s respective companies, emphasizing that “those involved in the Venezuelan oil trade continue to face significant sanctions risks.”
“President Trump has been clear: We will not allow the illegitimate Maduro regime to profit from exporting oil while it floods the United States with deadly drugs,” Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent said. “The Treasury Department will continue to implement President Trump’s campaign of pressure on Maduro’s regime.”
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The new round of sanctions against the companies and vessels linked to the Maduro regime’s illicit actions are pursuant to the sanctions imposed by President Donald Trump’s administration to Venezuela’s state-owned oil company PDVSA during Trump’s first term in 2019. At the time, President Trump sanctioned PDVSA and banned the U.S. from purchasing Venezuelan oil in response to the extensive list of human rights violations committed by the Maduro regime against its own people. President Trump took additional actions to block PDVSA through an August 2019 Executive Order.
OFAC explained that Wednesday’s sanctions complement other recent actions taken by the United States against the Maduro regime, including sanctions against socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro’s convicted drug-trafficking nephews and sanctions against PDVSA-linked officials, associates, and vessels.
Over the past months, President Trump has intensified his pressure campaign against dictator Maduro, who is actively wanted by U.S. courts on multiple narco-terrorism charges.
Maduro stands accused of being a leader, if not the leader of, the Cartel of the Suns, an international cocaine trafficking operation run by top members of the Venezuelan regime and the nation’s military. The United States has an active $50 million bounty on information that can lead to Maduro’s arrest and/or conviction.
In December, President Trump announced a “total and complete” blockade of all sanctioned oil tankers entering or leaving Venezuela. Since then, the United States has interdicted two oil tankers transporting Venezuelan sanctioned oil.
Maduro has fiercely condemned the interdiction of both tankers, comparing the situation to be “like Pirates of the Caribbean.” The Venezuelan dictator has repeatedly claimed that the United States’s ongoing military presence in international waters as part of the Trump administration’s efforts to fight drug cartels and curb the flow of drugs entering the United States is a “pretext” to stage a purported “invasion” of Venezuela, oust him from power, and “steal” Venezuela’s oil and other natural resources.
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