Venezuela: USAID Funded Guaidó to Weaken Govt, Says Maduro

On Wednesday, February 5, the Attorney General of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Tarek William Saab, said in a press conference that he issued an arrest warrant against Juan Guaidó for allegedly committing the crimes of usurpation of the homeland, usurpation of public office and irregular handling of funds coming from NGOs and CITGO, the US-based subsidiary of Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA.

Saab explained that the Venezuelan investigations of 2023 led the Attorney General’s Office to request the apprehension of Guaidó “for the criminal management he had of CITGO [whose losses for the Venezuelan State reached] 20 billion dollars.” 

USAID funding and accusations of misuse

In addition to the CITGO charges, the Attorney General said that USAID “has paid, as has been discovered, NGOs that have infamously used the issues of human rights and freedom of expression to receive tens of millions of dollars.” In this regard, William Saab has requested that the US authorities hand over the information on USAID “to handle that information in a coordinated manner and act according to what the Venezuelan Constitution and law stipulates against this gang of criminals who have used parapolitics to enrich themselves with impunity.”

For his part, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro said that USAID gave groups linked to Guaidó more than 700 million dollars to weaken his government: “260 million [dollars] for supposed humanitarian assistance, 247 for development, 200 million from a fund they called development fund…In the documents, they are more than 700 million.” To this end, the US government, Maduro claims, withdrew funding from UN or UN-subsidized organizations to give it “to whomever [Juan Guaidó] ordered.” 

Juan Guaidó’s decline

Juan Guaidó emerged from near oblivion and became the center of a great controversy when, as a deputy in Parliament, the opposition–having split the Legislative Power into two parallel factions– arbitrarily declared him interim President of Venezuela from 2019 to early 2023. During this time, he received partial international recognition, largely from the US and its allies, but faced strong opposition from the government of President Nicolás Maduro, which remained in power despite the opposition’s claims. 

By 2021, his partial international recognition was losing legitimacy because, despite the allocation of certain Venezuelan funds held abroad, he never managed to control relevant Venezuelan institutions.

US investigations into USAID are at least ten years behind Venezuela’s 

William Saab’s accusations follow the United States’ investigation into USAID’s handling of resources over several years. President Donald Trump announced that, following preliminary investigations, contracts of non-essential USAID personnel worldwide would be suspended.

According to Diosdado Cabello, Vice President of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), the US authorities’ investigations come more than ten years after the Venezuelan Attorney General’s Office initiated its investigations in 2014. 

In this regard, former military and mercenary Jordan Goudreau, who claimed to have led, with the support of the US government, the military incursion of Macuto Bay in Venezuela in 2020 (called Operation Gideon), said that “The FBI is now investigating Juan Guaidó for USAID fraud. Listen, four and a half years ago they had evidence of this. The FBI had evidence that the CIA was involved in my operation.”