USA he insisted this Sunday on requesting the “unconditional” release of the six former directors of the Venezuelan company Citgo imprisoned in Venezuela, on the fourth anniversary of his arrest in the Caribbean country.
The spokesman for the US State Department, Ned Price, said in a statement that this Sunday marks four years since those executives, who have dual Venezuelan and US citizenship, “traveled to Venezuela and were not allowed to return.”
“After being invited to Venezuela, masked security agents detained the six and imprisoned them on misleading charges, without due process or access to a fair trial,” said Price.
“Now that a fourth Thanksgiving Day is approaching (since then), we continue to seek his unconditional return and the release of all US citizens unjustly detained abroad,” he added.
The detainees are José Pereira, Tomeu Vadell Recalde, Jorge Luis Toledo Kohury, Gustavo Adolfo Cárdenas Cardona, José Zambrano and Alirio Zambrano.
In 2017, Venezuela accused them of having signed contracts that “compromised the national heritage and the future” of Citgo, which is a subsidiary of the Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA, “without the approval of the National Executive.”
Last year, the six were sentenced to between nine and thirteen years in prison, and although in April of this year they were allowed to serve that sentence under house arrest, in October they were again transferred to jail.
“We ask the Venezuelan authorities who have imprisoned them to be allowed to return to the United States to be able to reunite with their families,” the State Department spokesman stressed.
The former directors’ return to prison in October occurred, according to their lawyers, allegedly in retaliation for the extradition from Cape Verde to Miami of Alex Saab, alleged front man for Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
Saab has pleaded not guilty to the charge that the US Attorney’s Office accuses him of, of having laundered up to US $ 350 million that he allegedly defrauded through the exchange control system in Venezuela.
Citgo is the main oil refiner and marketer of gasoline, lubricant and petrochemicals that Venezuela has in the United States.
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