An influential
group of Republican and Democratic U.S. senators will file sweeping legislation
on Wednesday to address the crisis in Venezuela, including sanctioning
individuals responsible for undermining democracy or involved in corruption,
Senate aides said.
The bill would
provide $10 million in humanitarian aid to the struggling country, require the
State Department to coordinate a regional effort to ease the crisis, and ask
U.S. intelligence to report on the involvement of Venezuelan government
officials in corruption and the drug trade, according to a copy seen by
Reuters.
It also calls
on President Donald Trump to take all necessary steps to prevent Rosneft,
Russia's state oil company, from gaining control of any U.S. energy
infrastructure.
Rosneft has
been gaining ground in Venezuela as the country scrambles for cash. The
Venezuelan state oil company, PDVSA, last year used 49.9 percent of its shares
in its U.S. subsidiary, Citgo, as collateral for loan financing by Rosneft.
In total,
Rosneft has lent PDVSA between $4 billion and $5 billion.
The measure
comes as the international community has struggled to respond to deep economic
crisis and street protests in the South American OPEC nation.
Some 29 people
have been killed, more than 400 injured and hundreds more arrested since
demonstrations against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro's government began
in April amid severe shortages of food and medicine, deep recession and
hyper-inflation.
On Tuesday,
Venezuela's opposition blocked streets in the capital, Caracas, to denounce
Maduro's decision to create a "constituent assembly," which critics
said was a veiled attempt to cling to power by avoiding elections.
Senate aides
said the bill sought to react to the crisis by working with countries across
the Americas and international organizations, rather than unilaterally, while
targeting some of the root causes of the crisis and supporting human rights.
U.S. officials
have long been reluctant to be too vocal about Venezuela, whose leaders accuse
Washington of being the true force behind opposition to the country's leftist
government.
PROMINENT
SPONSORS
The lead
sponsors of the legislation are Senator Ben Cardin, the senior Democrat on the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Senator Marco Rubio, the Republican
chairman of the panel's western hemisphere subcommittee and a vocal critic of
Venezuela's government.
Boosting its
chances of getting through Congress, co-sponsors include Senator John Cornyn,
the chamber's No. 2 Republican, and Senator Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat, as
well as Republican Senator John McCain, the influential chairman of the Senate
Armed Services Committee.
The bill has
11 sections, seeking to deal with the crisis with a broad brush.
Addressing
corruption, it would require the U.S. State Department and intelligence
agencies to prepare an unclassified report, with a classified annex, on any
involvement of Venezuelan government officials in corruption and the drug
trade.
The U.S.
Treasury Department has in the past sanctioned Venezuelan officials or former
officials, charging them with trafficking or corruption, a designation that
allows their assets in the United States to be frozen and bars them from
conducting financial transactions through the United States.
The officials
have denied the charges, and called them a pretext as part of an effort to
topple Maduro's government.
The new
legislation seeks to put into law sanctions imposed under former President
Barack Obama's executive order targeting individuals found to "undermine
democratic governance" or involved in corruption.
*Reuters*
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