From jets to Florida luxury homes: U.S. seized a fortune from Maduro
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/venezuela/article311690940.html
Excerpt:
The more than $700 million in assets the United States says it has confiscated from Venezuelan ruler Nicolás Maduro includes multiple luxury properties in Florida, Attorney General Pam Bondi said Wednesday.
Bondi’s remarks to Spanish language outlet Fox Noticias followed Friday’s announcement that the U.S. had doubled the bounty for the Venezuelan strongman to a record-setting $50 million for any information leading to his capture. At the time, she described Maduro as one of the world’s top drug kingpins and said his trafficking organization poses a direct threat to the United States.
Bondi said the United States has already seized a number of high-value assets linked to Maduro.
“These assets include two multimillion-dollar jets, multiple homes, a mansion in the Dominican Republic, several million-dollar homes in Florida, a horse farm, nine vehicles, luxury cars, and millions of dollars in jewelry and cash,” she said. “Yet his reign of terror continues... and his organized crime operation continues to function.”
Bondi did not provide details about the specific locations of the Florida properties.
In the interview, she described Maduro’s network as an organized crime operation, “no different than the mafia,” claiming that it is deeply embedded within the Venezuelan military and closely tied to some of the most violent criminal groups in the hemisphere.
In announcing the new bounty last week, Bondi said Maduro leads the Cartel of the Suns, a powerful narcotics organization that operates within Venezuela’s armed forces while ruling the country and maintaining partnerships with the nation’s notorious Tren de Aragua gang, Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel and other international syndicates.
“He is one of the world’s biggest drug traffickers and a threat to our national security,” Bondi said. “That’s why we’ve doubled his bounty to $50 million.”
A federal indictment in New York traces Maduro’s rise inside the Cartel of the Suns. Prosecutors say that after the 2013 death of Hugo Chávez, Maduro evolved from a facilitator into the cartel’s top leader, merging its operations with the Venezuelan state to shield it from prosecution.
Court documents also claim the cartel’s objective went beyond profit, accusing it of seeking to “flood the United States with cocaine” as a means of causing social harm.Intelligence reports estimate that at least 250 tons of cocaine transited through Venezuela annually as of five years ago, but the volume has possibly doubled since to compensate for the collapse of oil income caused by U.S. sanctions.
Re Maduro’s bounty:
Will the government use these things or sell them to reduce the deficit?
Three women charged over newborn’s death in female genital mutilation case
Excerpt:
Three women in Gambia have been charged over the death of a one-month-old girl who had undergone female genital mutilation, the police said.
The child’s death is the first such case since the country stopped short of reversing a ban on the practice last year.
The West African nation banned female genital cutting in 2015, but the country was rocked by a renewed debate about the practice last year following the first prosecutions of female cutters. It was the first time the practice — also known as female circumcision and outlawed in many nations — was publicly discussed.
Eventually, the Gambian parliament upheld the ban, but many say the practice continues in secrecy.
Three women were charged on Tuesday under the ban, the Women’s (Amendment) Act 2015. One woman is facing life imprisonment, and the other two were charged as accomplices.
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Barbarian savages.