Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro was a long-time ally of Venezuela’s populist leader Hugo Chávez and succeeded him after he died of cancer in 2013.
The former bus driver and union leader never had the popular base nor charisma that Chavez possessed – and his victory in the 2013 presidential election was contested by the opposition.
During Maduro’s tenure since then, Venezuela has seen bouts of unrest and economic crisis, amid a growing raft of US sanctions and mismanagement of the country’s critical oil industry.
In 2017, Maduro sought to redefine and expand the president’s powers to bypass the National Assembly, which was then controlled by the opposition, amid weeks of street protests in the capital Caracas.
In 2018, during an election denounced by opposition leaders and the international community, Maduro won another six-year term, but the election was widely denounced by the international community as illegitimate.
The first Trump administration charged Maduro with narco-terrorism in 2020.
The Venezuelan regime “remains plagued by criminality and corruption,” said then US Attorney General Barr. “For more than 20 years, Maduro and a number of high-ranking colleagues allegedly conspired with the [Colombian guerilla group] FARC, causing tons of cocaine to enter and devastate American communities.”
In response, Maduro called US President Donald Trump a “racist cowboy”.
There were further accusations of electoral fraud when Maduro declared the winner of the last presidential contest. He was sworn in last January.
Since then, the Trump administration has stepped up economic and military pressure on the Maduro regime.
On August 7, US Attorney General Pamela Bondi announced a $50 million reward for information leading to the arrest of Maduro.
Maduro’s wife, Cilia Adela Flores de Maduro, is a lawyer and has been a deputy in the National Assembly for the last ten years.