A court filing on Friday showed the United States has agreed to modify sanctions so the Venezuelan government can pay legal fees for Nicolás Maduro’s defense team, removing a key obstacle to the drug-trafficking prosecution of the ousted president. The move clears the way for Caracas to fund the lawyers Maduro has said he needs for his U.S. case.
Maduro, 63, and his wife Cilia Flores, 69, were captured at their Caracas home by U.S. special forces on Jan. 3 and transported to New York to face federal charges, including a narcoterrorism conspiracy count. Both have pleaded not guilty and remain detained in Brooklyn as they await trial.
In February, Maduro’s attorney Barry Pollack asked U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein in Manhattan to dismiss the case, arguing that U.S. sanctions barring payments from the Venezuelan government deprived Maduro of his constitutional right to counsel of choice. Pollack said neither Maduro nor Flores could afford private counsel and that Caracas was prepared to cover defense costs.
At a March 26 hearing, Hellerstein said he did not intend to dismiss the indictment but expressed doubt that the government was justified in blocking payments for counsel. Prosecutor Kyle Wirshba countered that the sanctions advance legitimate national security and foreign policy objectives, and asserted that the courts could not order the Treasury Department to change sanctions policy because foreign policy decisions rest with the executive branch.
The judge also observed that Washington had loosened some sanctions on Venezuela since Maduro was removed from power and that relations had improved after Delcy Rodriguez took charge on an interim basis. He noted the defendants are in U.S. custody and do not appear to present an ongoing national security threat, and stressed the importance of the constitutional right to counsel.
Sanctions on Caracas were significantly expanded during Donald Trump’s first term, when Washington accused Maduro’s government of corruption, democratic backsliding and called the 2018 election fraudulent. Maduro rejects those charges and has said drug-trafficking allegations are pretexts for U.S. attempts to gain control of Venezuela’s oil resources.
The Treasury adjustment is limited in scope and intended to allow government-to-lawyer payments for legal representation; court filings did not indicate broader changes to sanctions policy. The development removes a legal and practical barrier to Maduro’s preferred defense arrangement as his case proceeds in federal court.