Biden Raises Bounty For Nicolás Maduro to $25 Million

The Biden Administration said on Friday that it was offering $25 million for information leading to the arrest of Nicolás Maduro, the president of Venezuela.

The announcement is Washington’s retaliatory measure for Mr. Maduro’s decision to assume a third term in office on Friday. Mr. Maduro has presented no evidence that he won a July election, while his opponent Edmundo González has presented thousands of publicly available vote tallies that he says indicate he easily won the most votes.

The United States has recognized Mr. González as the president-elect of Venezuela and has urged Mr. Maduro to step aside.

In 2020, under the Trump administration, the State Department offered a $15 million reward for help arresting Mr. Maduro. At the time, he was indicted in the United States, accused in a decades-long narco-terrorism and international cocaine trafficking conspiracy. Mr. Maduro remains under indictment.

The Justice Department’s formal accusation of a foreign head of state was an unusual move that signaled the United States was likely to take an increasingly hard line against Mr. Maduro.

The new $25 million bounty represents an escalation.

The United States will also offer $25 million for information leading to the capture of the country’s interior minister, Diosdado Cabello, up from $10 million.

And the State Department added another reward: $15 million for help with detention of Venezuela’s defense minister, Padrino López.

Just minutes after Mr. Maduro was sworn in on Friday for another term, the U.S. Treasury Department also said it was placing new sanctions on eight Venezuelan officials, adding to a long list of Maduro allies already under sanction.

The measures freeze assets that the officials have in the United States.

“The United States and its allies in the region have pushed Maduro to commit to a democratic transition,” Bradley T. Smith, a treasury official, said in a statement. “Instead, Maduro and his representatives have continued their violent repression in an attempt to maintain power, and have ignored the Venezuelan people’s calls from for democratic accountability.”

The Biden administration also announced that it would extend protections given to roughly 600,000 Venezuelans living in the United States who have temporary protected status, a program that allows migrants from countries experiencing crisis to live and work legally in the United States.

Venezuelan migrants who apply can have their status extended another 18 months.