Who pays for Maduro’s defense? And why this has caused controversy in the USA

A simple question these days pits the United States government against Nicolás Maduro: who should pay for the former Venezuelan president’s defense in New York?” The question should be a crucial point in Maduro’s new hearing before a federal court in Manhattan this Thursday (26/3), in the initial phase of the process he faces on drug trafficking charges — something he denies. Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, who is accused of similar crimes and is also imprisoned in New York, argue that their defense should be paid for by the Venezuelan State. The American government, however, claims that this possibility is prohibited by the sanctions applied to Venezuela and that the couple could only pay for the defense with their own resources. The costs of lawyers chosen in big cases like this can reach millions of dollars. Hellerstein is unlikely to invalidate this case, which has attracted international attention since the US arrested Maduro and Flores in a lightning military operation in Caracas on January 3. “The request to dismiss the charge is absurd,” Ronald Allen, a law professor at Northwestern University and an expert on criminal procedure, told BBC Mundo — the BBC’s Spanish-language service. arrest and transfer of Maduro and Flores to New York, their lawyers began to look for a way to pay defense fees with resources from the Venezuelan government. On January 7, they requested authorization for this from the Office of Foreign Assets Control (Ofac, its acronym in English), a US Treasury body responsible for applying Washington’s international economic sanctions. corruption, human rights violations, drug trafficking and other crimes. On January 9, Ofac granted the requested authorizations to Maduro and Flores. However, it revoked the first less than three hours later and the second a few weeks later. In February, Maduro’s lawyer, Barry Pollack, asked the Manhattan court to dismiss the indictment. According to its laws, it has the obligation to pay Mr. Maduro’s defense expenses,” he said. To support this argument, he presented the statement of a Venezuelan jurist and indicated that the country’s government “is willing to fulfill its obligation to pay defense costs.” Venezuela’s interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, stated that Maduro is still the country’s “legitimate president” and that both he and Flores are innocent. However, Caracas and Washington reestablished diplomatic relations after the capture of Maduro, amid several pressures from the Donald Trump government on Rodríguez, Pollack is a lawyer with experience in big cases. In 2024, he managed to release Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks who was accused by the US of disclosing national security information. But, in his letter in defense of Maduro, Pollack indicated that he would leave the case if the Treasury restrictions were maintained. Venezuela’s resources was an “administrative error” that was corrected. “Ofac regulations expressly prohibit the use of funds from a sanctioned entity to pay the attorneys’ fees of another sanctioned person,” stated a document presented to the court on March 13, signed by Jay Clayton and other prosecutors. The document denies that the US is interfering with the right to defense and states that both Maduro and Flores can pay their lawyers with personal resources, despite being under sanctions. Venezuelan government because, according to the US, “they were not employees or legitimate employees of Venezuela”. Last week, Pollack and Flores’ lawyer, Mark Donnelly, reiterated to the judge that their clients do not have the resources to pay for their defense — as they claim in a sworn statement — and that they could present financial evidence. Allen, a decision to dismiss the indictment based on this, as requested by the defense, “would only occur if the delay in accessing the resources would cause some irreparable harm.” “In this case, if (Maduro) receives the resources, he can use them to cover the costs of his defense, which solves the problem”, he adds that “an accused has no right to spend other people’s money on his defense”. Maduro, but also important differences. Perhaps the most similar is the case carried out by the American government against the former president of Panama, Manuel Noriega, after invading the country and capturing him in 1990 to be tried for drug trafficking. Initially, the US denied Noriega access to his frozen bank accounts to cover the costs of his defense, estimated at millions of dollars. impasse with the prosecution, they reached an agreement validated by the judge in the case to allocate part of the frozen resources to the defense. The trial was held in a federal court in Miami and General Noriega was convicted in 1992. More recently, former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández was extradited to the USA in 2022 to be tried for drug trafficking in the same court that is handling Maduro’s case. Hernández’s family indicated that his defense would be financed with. The former president was also convicted, but in December he received a surprise pardon from Trump and regained his freedom. However, in none of these previous cases were the accused still recognized as presidents by the government of their countries when facing American justice — which is what happens with Maduro. Venezuela, outside the jurisdiction of the US”, says Keitner to BBC Mundo. “But lawyers who work in American courts need to be paid in a way that is compatible with the sanctions applied.” In her assessment, if Maduro’s rights under the Sixth Amendment are violated by the ban on using Venezuelan money in his defense, “it is undoubtedly an unprecedented issue, given the very unusual circumstances of this case”. Maduro, imprisoned for 80 days in NY, returns to US Justice: what is at stake in this Thursday’s hearing Assange’s former lawyer and 92-year-old judge: the key figures in Maduro’s trial in the US

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