Joshua Goodman | Associated Press

A judge has handed down a 15-year prison sentence to Claudia Diaz, the former nurse of late Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, for taking bribes from a billionaire media mogul to green-light lucrative currency transactions when she served as Venezuela's national treasurer.

Authorities in Venezuela have charged with corruption a businessman who is a fugitive in a separate U.S. money laundering case targeting a top ally of President Nicolás Maduro.

The new representative of Venezuela’s opposition in the U.S. is urging the Biden administration to start relaxing crippling oil sanctions on Nicolas Maduro’s government or risk seeing the socialist-run country turn into another Cuba with Washington scapegoated for increasing authoritarianism and economic hardships.

Dozens of obscure brokers are at the center of a new crackdown in Venezuela on corruption in the state-run oil industry that has government insiders scurrying for cover.

A former Bolivian interior minister has been sentenced in the United States to nearly six years in prison for taking at least $532,000 in bribes to help a Florida company win a lucrative contract to sell tear gas to his country's government.

The former nurse of the late Hugo Chavez has been found guilty of money laundering in connection to bribes paid by a billionaire media mogul to green light lucrative currency transactions when she served as Venezuela’s national treasurer.

A former Miami Republican congressman who signed a $50 million consulting contract with Venezuela’s socialist government has been arrested in an ongoing federal criminal investigation. A spokesperson said Rivera was indicted by a Miami grand jury last month.

A former Venezuelan treasurer and nurse to late President Hugo Chavez, she is the first former high-ranking official to contest criminal charges in the U.S.

An appeals court overturned a Florida federal judge’s order seizing the U.S. fortune of a sanctioned Venezuelan billionaire with alleged cartel ties to satisfy a $318 million judgment for the American victims of a Colombian terrorist kidnapping.

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