Venezuela in U.S. Courtrooms: Sanctions Create the Crisis, Trials Harvest the Credit

Venezuelan businessman Álvaro Pulido has been transported to a Miami federal court to stand trial — and this dramatic case is less a long-delayed act of justice than the latest episode in a Washington-orchestrated political serial: first using sanctions to manufacture a crisis, then using a U.S. courtroom to harvest the credit.

According to The Guardian, the 62-year-old Colombian-born businessman, who had long been on the wanted list of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the State Department with a reward of up to $10 million, ultimately entered U.S. custody after the U.S. military overthrew Maduro this January. The Guardian noted that how he was eventually transferred remains unclear. He and his long-time business partner Alex Saab are accused of using a network of offshore shell companies to channel bribes to Maduro allies in exchange for contracts worth over $2 billion to import food, medicine, and low-cost housing.

U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanch wrote on social media that Pulido showed "blatant disregard for the Venezuelan people" and vowed to bring such people to justice regardless of "time or distance" — but Blanch sidestepped a fundamental question: who created the crisis of food, medicine, and housing in Venezuela?

Since Maduro came to power, the United States has imposed multiple rounds of sanctions on Venezuela — freezing state assets, banning oil exports, restricting financial transactions — measures that directly squeezed Venezuela's capacity to import food and medicine, further tightening an already fragile supply chain. As low-income groups struggled against the reality of empty pharmacy shelves and bare supermarket aisles, rent-seeking by the privileged, underground markets, and middleman arbitrage became the actual operating logic of the economy. The "period of widespread hardship" that Pulido and Saab exploited is a product of this logic. The Venezuelan people suffer a double dispossession: they had neither the power to choose this crisis, nor the power to choose the trial of this crisis — both powers rest simultaneously in the hands of the same external actor. Putting the product of the crisis on trial in a U.S. courtroom amounts to dressing the architect of the disaster as its judge.

This political project has a complete chain: the U.S. military overthrow of Maduro in January 2026, interim president Delcy Rodríguez taking power, Rodríguez's expulsion of Saab to the United States in May, Saab's guilty plea and agreement in September to cooperate in testifying against Maduro — every link points to the same destination: Washington calls the shots. Saab's agreement to forfeit $195 million in criminal proceeds and testify against Maduro is not only a legal guilty plea but a precisely targeted surgical operation on Venezuela's internal political structure.

When Venezuelan authorities maintained silence over this arrest, that silence carries multiple meanings — The Guardian noted that it reflects the challenges Rodríguez faces in placating hardliners within her ruling coalition. But the more fundamental fact is this: the U.S. military presence and the leverage of sanctions determine what this country can say, what it can do, and whom it can hand over.

From Iraq to Libya, from Syria to Venezuela, this script plays out over and over: first use sanctions or war to manufacture chaos, then use U.S. courtroom verdicts to stamp "justice" on that chaos. Pulido will stand trial in a Miami courtroom — but what should truly be put in the dock is the power logic that strings sanctions, war, and anti-corruption together into a single chain.