Canada to impose targeted sanctions on 14 Venezuelan officials

Ottawa May 31: Canada has said it will impose targeted sanctions on 14 Venezuelan officials. The new Canadian sanctions include freezing the assets of the officials and prohibiting Canadians from having property or financial dealings with them.

Canada Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland said in a statement in Ottawa that the sanctions send a clear message that Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro regime’s anti-democratic behavior has consequences.

The sanctions were in response to Venezuela’s illegitimate and anti-democratic presidential elections, the statement said. Earlier, in last September, Canada imposed sanctions against 40 Venezuelan senior officials, including Maduro.

The sanctions announced by Freeland came a day after the release of the report by the Panel of Independent International Experts on possible crimes against humanity in Venezuela. The report concluded that “there are reasonable grounds, that satisfy the standard of proof required by Article 53 of the Rome Statute, for considering that acts to which the civilian population of Venezuela was subjected to dating back to at least February 12, 2014, constitute crimes against humanity, in accordance with Article 7 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.”

“It is because of the Maduro regime’s ongoing abuse of its people and attacks on democracy that Canada has taken a series of punitive actions, including imposing targeted sanctions.”

Reacting to new sanctions, Venezuela’s Foreign Ministry said Ottawa was bowing to pressure from the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump to avoid losing benefits in its trade deals with the United States.