If the idea is to super-charge Venezuela’s biggest potential industry, oil, making it viable and profitable, who is better than a private sector person who knows this stuff? Would the WP prefer a Modern Socialist bureaucrat?
Trump’s unofficial Venezuela viceroy shapes U.S. policy, raising oversight concerns
In the hours after U.S. military forces spirited away Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on Jan. 3, Secretary of State Marco Rubio placed a call to Maduro’s second-in-command, Vice President Delcy Rodríguez.
Two others were also on the line. One was her brother, Jorge Rodríguez, the head of the Venezuelan legislature, according to four people familiar with the call. The other was Rubio’s right-hand man on Venezuela: Mauricio Claver-Carone.
A Florida lawyer who briefly served as special envoy to Latin America early in President Donald Trump’s second term, Claver-Carone, 51, has no official job in the U.S. government. But as the administration was formulating plans last fall to send Maduro into exile or capture him, Claver-Carone was intimately involved, by his own account and those of others.
Since Maduro’s removal, Claver-Carone has taken on an even greater role as the unofficial U.S. viceroy of Venezuela, helping to implement the administration’s plan to work with Delcy Rodríguez and exploit the South American country’s vast oil wealth.
“Exploit” to the point of Venezuela having easy access to beer, toilet paper, and food with the citizens enjoying a good life rather than living in the 3rd world it had become.
Working directly with Rodríguez — now the Trump-recognized interim president — her brother, Jorge, and other officials in Caracas, Claver-Carone relays instructions on behalf of Washington, according to more than 10 current and former U.S. officials, people in contact with the Venezuelan government and other knowledgeable observers who discussed his role. Most spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy and the sometimes tense relationship between the two capitals.
Of course they have anonymous people. Then there is no one to point to and no way to ascertain the veracity of the complaints
Claver-Carone, usually operating by phone from his home and office in southern Florida, has been instrumental in picking winners and losers among aspiring investors as the country’s long-faltering oil industry is rejuvenated, said people familiar with his dealings. Most recently, he said, he vouched for Centerview Partners, a New York-based financial firm that was among the many vying to be hired by the Venezuelan government to help restructure its $170 billion debt.
It wasn’t faltering. Chavez and Maduro destroyed it. Their socialism destroyed it.
Claver-Carone, in a lengthy interview with The Washington Post, described his role in Venezuela as a “connector,” whose intimate knowledge of players and policy in Washington and Caracas is needed and sought by both parties.
How dare Trump and Rubio involved smart business people!
His lofty, if unofficial, position and the close hold the administration keeps on its Venezuela decision-making have raised questions about oversight in the affairs of the resource-rich nation that is emerging as a U.S. neo-colony. Under Rodríguez’s interim presidency, the country has largely avoided revolutionary convulsions while a Wild West marketplace swarms with U.S. companies and investors.
Critics say his unofficial position also highlights the lack of transparency within the Trump administration between the worlds of business and diplomacy. Although the long-shuttered U.S. Embassy in Caracas has reopened, the Venezuela portfolio is handled almost exclusively by the White House — where Rubio does double-duty as Trump’s national security adviser — rather than the State Department, according to two U.S. officials.
Critics = people bitching because they aren’t involved. And the rest of the article is a long bitchfest. Did any WP reporter actually go to Venezuela to see what’s going on, or just sit at home or their office working off social media reports?
Read: Washington Post Seems Upset A Business Insider Is Heavily Involved In Venezuela Policy »
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