By: Insight Crime
October 1, 2024
The United States sanctioned several Venezuelan government officials for extorting money from political detainees, highlighting how President Nicolás Maduro’s administration relies on criminal rents to stay in power.
On September 12, the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned 16 Venezuelan state officials for their role in obstructing the July 28 presidential elections and violating human rights.
Among those sanctioned is Miguel Antonio Muñoz Palacios, who has been director of the Bolivarian Intelligence Service (Servicio Bolivariano de Inteligencia Nacional – SEBIN) since 2021 and accused of being part of the Pitbull Group.
According to the report, the Pitbull Group was made up of members of the SEBIN and the Military Counterintelligence Directorate (Dirección General de Contrainteligencia Militar – DGCIM), whom US authorities accuse of committing murders and kidnappings for money.
“The Pitbull Group was tasked with doing the ‘dirty work,’ and there were no legal parameters with what they were tasked to do,” OFAC detailed.
Following the July 28 presidential elections, the Venezuelan government has carried out a massive wave of arrests. This has been accompanied by extortion, with security officials promising not to arrest people or to release them from detention centers in exchange for money.
To date, at least 1,834 people have been detained in Venezuela for political reasons, according to human rights watchdog Foro Penal.
An Extortion Epidemic
This is not the first time that Venezuela has seen these types of abuses and extortion by members of the security forces.
During Operation Trueno in the state of Guárico, a military operation against the Tren del Llano criminal group, police and military arrested people on false charges and demanded bribes for their release. They also harassed and extorted local businessmen.
“I would say that extortion has become an epidemic [in the security forces] in the last two years,” Marino Alvarado, coordinator of the nonprofit Provea, told InSight Crime. “Usually, they ask for dollars, but when people don’t have the dollars they can even go as far as asking for medium-value objects like televisions, telephones, tires,” he added.
After the presidential elections, security agents switched targets, demanding money from people linked to the opposition or those who worked the polling stations to avoid arrest.
According to Alvarado, the amounts demanded by the officials start at $10,000. If the victim’s relatives do not have this amount, the officials start to lower the amount until they obtain between $1,000 to $2,000.
In a testimony given to a lawyer, one victim described how she was pursued by the authorities after working during the elections as a table monitor for the opposition in Miranda state, in the north-central part of the country.
Officials contacted her family and demanded $5,000 to not arrest her. But her family was only able to raise $2,000 by selling belongings, including her motorcycle. Security agents continued to search for her, and the victim had no choice but to flee the country.
A Means of Survival
This systematic extortion by security forces is just one facet of how Maduro uses the hybrid criminal state to hold on to power.
Reports of abuse by police and military forces often go unaddressed by state institutions. During Operation Trueno, nonprofit Defiende Venezuela documented dozens of cases of human rights abuses — whose stories were published by InSight Crime — that were reported to the authorities. To date, there has been no response.
The regime has also leveraged its ties to criminal groups to influence the elections and maintain power. Security forces have been accused of working closely with criminal armed groups to disband protests and persecute members of the opposition, operating with impunity.
Despite complaints from extortion victims over the last two months, there has been no response from judicial authorities, demonstrating how security forces have license from the state to extort in exchange for their loyalty.