Venezuela has become ‘the best evil experiment’ against multilateralism by US – Maduro’s VP

The US has slapped over 350 unilateral sanctions on Venezuela, including weaponizing the dollar and turning the country into a testing ground for its ongoing assault on the word order, Venezuela’s VP Delcy Rodriguez told the UN.

Taking the floor at the UN General Assembly on Friday, Rodriguez tore into Washington’s policy of regime change against the government in Caracas, which she said is now being conducted by the means of “economic terrorism.”

Rather than resorting to blunt military force, the US “uses the dominance of the dollar as the international reserve currency” to gut the Venezuelan economy “in order to bring our people to their knees,” she said.

“The Treasury Department is the economic Pentagon mentoring international relations and punishing millions of innocent people to enforce doctrines of regime change and to steal the resources of nations.”

A total of more than 350 "unilateral coercive measures” that include “illicit appropriation” of Venezuela’s assets outside the country have been adopted against Venezuela from 2015 to the present day, Rodriguez noted.

After recognizing opposition leader Juan Guaido as an ‘interim president’ in January, the US has seized about $7 billion in assets belonging to Venezuela’s state oil giant PDVSA and its US subsidiary Citgo, with the US court recently recognizing a shadowy board of Citgo directors ‘appointed’ by Guaido.

The sanctions crackdown has cost the Venezuelan economy a staggering $130 billion dollars since 2015, Rodriguez said, accusing the US of “a shameless robbery of all our resources” that resulted in a nine-fold drop in the country’s income.

The Venezuela’s case shows that “the international legal order has disappeared,” eroded by the years of the US-championed regime change policies around the world, with Venezuela becoming the best embodiment of the US efforts to date, the VP said.

"Venezuela has become the best evil experiment against multilateralism"

The rounds of punitive sanctions have taken a heavy toll on Venezuela’s already crisis-hit economy, sparking a mass migration to the neighboring countries amid food shortage and occasional blackouts. However, the US keeps tightening the screws, while playing a ‘lifesaver’ with aid dollars and funding the regime change campaign. On Tuesday, Washington allocated $52 million, reportedly diverted from humanitarian aid for Central American countries, “in development assistance” to Guaido, to help him “restore…democratic governance” in Venezuela.

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