Photo: JORGE ARREAZA, Minister of Venezuela/TWITTER / Courtesy
By: Real America News Updated 01 Oct 2022, 18: 18 pm EDT
The President Joe Biden announced this Saturday in a statement the release of 7 Americans who were imprisoned in Venezuela
, including 5 directors of the American company Citgo, a subsidiary of the Venezuelan state company PDVSA.
“These individuals they will soon be reunited with their families and in the arms of their loved ones, which is where they belong,” Biden said in the statement released by the White House.
Among the freed Americans there are five Citgo executives: the former president of that company José Ángel Pereira and the former vice presidents Tomeu Vadell, Alirio Zambrano, Jorge Toledo, and José Luis Zambrano, the latter four with US nationality as well as Venezuelan.
The former directors of Citgo, based in Houston (Texas) , were arrested in November 2017 during meetings in Caracas held by the state-owned company Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA).
The families of the detainees allege that PDVSA tricked them into going to Caracas with the intention of arresting them.
Once detained in Venezuela, they were accused of various corruption crimes, such as embezzlement of public funds, agreement between a public official and a contractor, money laundering and illicit association, among others.
One of the Citgo executives who was arrested, Gustavo Adolfo Cárdenas, was released in March of this year after a high-level US delegation visited Caracas.
The Americans were also released Osman Khan, who was arrested in January of this year, and retired Marine Matthew Heath, arrested in 2020 and accused of terrorism for his alleged participation in a covert operation to sabotage oil facilities, a charge that Washington considers false.