Overview
- Federal prosecutors disclosed late Friday in a court letter that Treasury’s sanctions office, OFAC, issued amended licenses letting Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores’s lawyers receive Venezuelan government payments.
- The licenses require that fees come from funds available after March 5, 2026 and not from restricted foreign government deposit accounts, a date tied to the restoration of U.S.–Venezuela diplomatic relations.
- Defense lawyers withdrew their motions to dismiss as moot, and both sides asked the judge to set a status conference in about 60 days to plan next steps in the case.
- At a March hearing, Judge Alvin Hellerstein questioned the need to block the payments and called the right to counsel paramount now that the defendants are in U.S. custody.
- U.S. forces captured the pair in Caracas on January 3 and flew them to New York, where they pleaded not guilty to narcoterrorism and drug charges and remain jailed in Brooklyn as discovery and other pretrial fights get underway.