© Univision.com
Venezuela presidential pretender Juan Guaido • US President Donald Trump
Venezuela's interim government wants access to funds confiscated in the US from corrupt officials,
saying it belongs to the Venezuelan people. But US officials appear to have other plans.
The Treasury Department diverted $601 million last year from its forfeiture fund to help build President Trump's border wall.
As Venezuela slides deeper into political chaos and financial ruin,
billions of dollars of public assets looted by corrupt government officials and their cronies, are being held by governments around the world, including the Trump administration, gathering dust.
Now, Venezuela's U.S.-backed government is gearing up efforts to try and recover that money to help its impoverished population battle the coronavirus pandemic, on top of an already calamitous public health crisis.
Meanwhile, the U.S. government is fighting in court to keep control of hundreds of millions of dollars of those ill-gotten gains, part of a treasure chest of forfeited assets from around the world.
"There is a moral imperative to look closely at this issue. The need in Venezuela is growing and the scale of the corruption is industrial," said
Michael Camilleri, who is writing a report on the forfeiture funds for the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington, D.C., group that promotes democracy in Latin America.
Comment: For a virus that is relatively harmless to the vast majority - particularly the young and healthy - one would need to read Pierre Lescaudron's article Compelling Evidence That SARS-CoV-2 Was Man-Made for insight into why the American troops may have been brought home with such haste.