Venezuelan Opposition Leaders Detained at Gunpoint in Raids
Venezuela Opposition Leaders Detained at Gunpoint, Witnesses Say
(Bloomberg) -- Venezuela’s most high-profile opposition figures were seized from their homes by security forces, according to people close to them, in what appeared to be a crackdown on officials challenging the government of President Nicolas Maduro.
Opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez was taken from his home at gunpoint, his wife said, just weeks after he had been transferred from military prison to house arrest after three years behind bars. Caracas Mayor Antonio Ledezma was also seized, according to his wife. Videos of the detentions were posted on Twitter.
“They’ve just taken Leopoldo from the house,” Lilian Tintori, his wife, said on her Twitter account. “We don’t know where he is, or where they are taking him.”
Lopez has become a symbol for rights groups and foreign governments, who’ve said his detention -- including stints in solitary confinement -- was clear evidence that Maduro was willing to trample basic rights to safeguard his power. As Venezuelans suffer food shortages and street violence escalates, Maduro is seeking to rewrite the constitution after a referendum on Sunday that the opposition and many foreign governments refused to recognize. Opponents regard the push to overhaul the charter as a power grab by an increasingly autocratic leader.
“If something happens to him, Maduro will be held responsible,” Tintori said. She released footage from a security camera that appeared to show armed security forces putting Lopez into a car marked with the seal of the intelligence police, known as Sebin.
Bloomberg couldn’t immediately confirm the authenticity of the videos. Calls to the Venezuelan embassies in Madrid and London for comment weren’t answered.
Ledezma, who opposes Maduro, was also taken from his home and was sent back to the Ramo Verde prison, according to his wife, Mitzy Capriles. A video shows him being taken out of his building in blue pijamas.
“It’s obvious this is retaliation after Sunday’s bad result, the government didn’t get the votes it wanted,” Capriles said at a press conference in Madrid. “Maduro is a dictator. If you go against the president, you go to prison.”
Debt Selloff
The Trump administration on Monday sanctioned Maduro -- who has led Venezuela since the death of Hugo Chavez in 2013 -- accusing his government of undermining democracy. He becomes the fourth head of state sanctioned by the U.S., joining North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe and Syria’s Bashar al-Assad.
Bets on a Venezuelan default are climbing and the implied probability of a missed payment over the next year has risen to 64 percent, according to data compiled by Bloomberg on credit-default swaps. The extra yield investors demand to hold Venezuelan debt over U.S. Treasuries widened 118 basis points to 30.95 percentage points, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co. data. The government’s $3 billion of bonds due in 2022 fell to a 15-month low on Tuesday, pushing the yield up to 39 percent.
“It’s a humanitarian crisis and a very sad situation,” Mark Dowding, a London-based money manager at BlueBay Asset Management, said in an interview with Bloomberg Surveillance. For the markets, “a five-year bond trading at 44 cents on the dollar is pretty much telling you that investors don’t expect to get paid back in full.”
Maduro, described by U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin as a dictator, has presided over an increasingly autocratic regime that has imperiled the country’s six-decade democracy and left its society in shambles. The crisis has brought soldiers onto the streets and forced Venezuelans to stockpile food and water.
The Venezuelan leader said he was being punished for going ahead with the vote and for his criticism of U.S. policies. “If the empire’s threats and sanctions don’t intimidate me, nothing scares me,” Maduro said on state television after receiving the electoral council report on the vote.
The constituent assembly chosen will meet as soon as this week to discuss changing the charter rewritten under former socialist leader Hugo Chavez, who is still revered as the inspiration for the revolution that Maduro claims to lead. The opposition says the rewrite is meant to silence the government’s critics in congress and delay general elections.
--With assistance from Rodrigo Orihuela Javier Blas Nour Al Ali Dana El Baltaji and Maria Tadeo
To contact the reporter on this story: Andrew J. Barden in Dubai at barden@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Andrew J. Barden at barden@bloomberg.net, Vivianne Rodrigues at vrodrigues3@bloomberg.net, Mark Williams, Stuart Biggs