US Targets Maduro Regime Insiders and Sanction Evaders in Oil Sector

The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, or OFAC, is targeting Nicolas Maduro’s illegitimate regime in Venezuela, sanctioning three nephews of Maduro’s wife, Cilia Flores; a Maduro-affiliated businessman; and six shipping companies operating in Venezuela’s oil sector.

“Nicolas Maduro and his criminal associates in Venezuela are flooding the United States with drugs that are poisoning the American people,” said Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent. The U.S. action announced on December 11 are part of a range of measures to hold the Maduro regime accountable.

Two of Cilia Flores’ nephews designated, Efrain Antonio Campo Flores (Campo) and Franqui Francisco Flores de Freitas (Flores de Freitas), are narco-traffickers operating in Venezuela.

In November 2015, Campo and Flores de Freitas, known popularly as the “narco-nephews,” were arrested in Port-au-Prince, Haiti as they were finalizing a deal to transport hundreds of kilograms of cocaine to the United States.

In November 2016, they were convicted on narco-trafficking charges but were granted clemency in October 2022 by President Joe Biden. Campo and Flores de Freitas returned to Venezuela and, as of 2025, have continued their drug trafficking activities.

Carlos Erik Malpica Flores (Malpica), the third of Cilia Flores’ nephews designated, and a former purported national treasurer of Venezuela and purported vice president of Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela, SA (PDVSA), was designated in July 2017 but removed from OFAC’s List of Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons (SDN List) in 2022 to promote the resumption of negotiations for an ultimately failed deal pursued by the Biden administration to return democratic elections to Venezuela.

Maduro continues to deny democratic values in the country and refuses to recognize the will of the Venezuelan people, and thus it is in the foreign policy interest of the United States to continue to apply pressure to those tied to the Maduro regime. Accordingly, OFAC is redesignating Malpica for being a current or former official of the Government of Venezuela.

This action is just the latest Treasury effort targeting Maduro’s familial web of corruption, nepotism, and narco-trafficking. Malpica, Campo, and Flores de Freitas join Maduro, Cilia Flores, Maduro’s son Nicolas Maduro Guerra, and Cilia Flores’ three sons, Walter Gavidia Flores, Yosser Gavidia Flores, and Yoswal Gavidia Flores, on the SDN List.

“Under President Trump’s leadership,” said Secretary Bessent, “Treasury is holding the regime and its circle of cronies and companies accountable for its continued crimes.”