The US Treasury announced yesterday it was freezing any US assets of two senior Venezuelan officials and a former official after accusing them of aiding Colombian rebels involved in drug trafficking.
The move comes as the United States moved toward expelling Venezuela's ambassador in Washington after Venezuela ordered expelled the US ambassador in Caracas in solidarity with Bolivia's expulsion of the US envoy in La Paz.
The Treasury targetted Hugo Armando Carvajal Barrios and Henry de Jesus Rangel Silva and former official Ramon Rodriguez Chacin for aiding "the narcotics trafficking activities of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC)."
The three "armed, abetted, and funded the FARC, even as it terrorized and kidnapped innocents," according to a statement from Adam Szubin, who heads the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).
"This is OFAC's sixth action in the last ten months against the FARC," the statement said.
"We will continue to target and isolate those individuals and entities that aid the FARC's deadly narco-terrorist activities in the Americas," it added.
"Today's action freezes any assets the designated entities and individuals may have under US jurisdiction and prohibits US persons from conducting financial or commercial transactions involving those assets," it said.
Hugo Armando Carvajal Barrios is the director of Venezuela's Military Intelligence Directorate (DGIM), the Treasury said.
It accused him of helping the FARC by "protecting drug shipments from seizure by Venezuelan anti-narcotics authorities," arming the FARC and allowing them to "maintain their stronghold" in Arauca, a cocaine producing area on the Colombia-Venezuela border.It alleged that Carvajal Barrios "also provides the FARC with official Venezuelan government identification documents" to facilitate the travel for FARC rebels to and from Venezuela.