Secret deal: Biden offered normal relations with Venezuela if Maduro agreed to elections

The Biden administration had agreed to lift sanctions on Venezuela and promised the return of normal relations if the opposition could participate in competitive presidential elections, according to a deal secretly signed in Qatar last year that leader Nicolas Maduro made public on social media.

Maduro published the document Wednesday, shortly before Secretary of State Antony Blinken declared that opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez won the Venezuelan presidential elections Sunday, citing the vote tallies presented by the opposition. The government-controlled electoral council said Maduro won, providing what were widely seen as fraudulent numbers.

The Qatar document shows the Biden administration struck a deal with Maduro to lift sanctions on the country’s oil, banking and gold sectors if he committed to elections and allow the opposition to compete. And it added a significant incentive to Maduro: the lifting of most sanctions after the winner took office.

At that point, the U.S. government would restore full diplomatic relations and dismantle the sanctions regime against the country, the document says. This would include unblocking all Venezuelan government assets in the United States and lifting sanctions, including individual ones imposed under an executive order.

Early on, Biden’s team turned the page from the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign policy and signaled it was willing to lift sanctions if Maduro allowed “free and fair elections.” In 2022, after intense lobbying, it authorized Chevron to expand its oil operations in the projects the company already had in Venezuela.

The Qatar agreement — a memorandum of understanding dated Sept 29, 2023, whose details had not been previously disclosed — shows how far the administration was willing to go and how instrumental its efforts were in getting Maduro to sign an electoral agreement with the opposition in Barbados last year.

The document, published by Maduro on X on Wednesday, did not have the U.S. representative’s signature. The White House did not reply to an email seeking confirmation of the document’s authenticity.

Gradual dismantling of sanctions

The Trump administration had imposed broad sanctions against the Maduro government, the state oil company PDVSA, the country’s central bank, the gold mining sector and the purchasing of Venezuelan debt, citing Maduro’s antidemocratic actions and human rights violations.

Perhaps more crippling for the regime, Washington also imposed sanctions on at least 115 high-ranking Venezuelan officials for their involvement in human rights abuses, actions to dismantle the country’s democratic system, acts of corruption or drug trafficking. The sanctions, imposed by the Office of Foreign Assets Control at the Department of the Treasury, in essence froze the assets the individuals might have in banks under U.S. jurisdiction.

According to the document released by Maduro, the Biden administration would move first to lift some sanctions after his government presented a draft copy of an electoral agreement with the opposition’s Unitary Platform.

In particular, the administration would issue licenses to authorize Haiti, Belize and the Dominican Republic to pay debt for oil sent by Venezuela through the Petrocaribe initiative and for Trinidad and Tobago to make cash payments to the state-owned Bank of Venezuela.

Trinidad and Tobago received a license from the U.S. Treasury Department to import gas from Venezuela in January 2023 but was barred from making cash payments.

The US. also agreed to allow three foreign oil companies—Repsol, ENI and Maurel & Prom— to continue operating in Venezuela, according to the document.

The Biden administration seems to have held their side of the bargain.

In February, the Venezuelan government announced it had received $500 million owed by Haiti after the United States authorized the transfer.

In May, PDVSA, Venezuela’s oil state company, said that the Spanish oil company Repsol had received a license from the United States to continue operating in Venezuela. Maurel & Prom made a similar announcement that month.

Following the announcement of a deal with the opposition, the Qatar agreement called for the U.S. government to issue a general license to allow transactions involving the Venezuelan oil sector and the Bank of Venezuela. It would also authorize the secondary trading of Venezuelan bonds and debt and “the participation in Venezuela’s gold sector,” the document says.

The Biden administration took those same steps when the Maduro government announced they had signed an agreement with the opposition in Barbados in October last year, just a month after the deal struck in Qatar. The Barbados agreement included several conditions listed in Maduro’s deal with the United States, including commitments to allow all opposition candidates to run, give them media time and invite neutral international observers to monitor the election.

But the Biden administration canceled the authorization to ease sanctions on the Venezuelan oil and gold sectors after Maduro banned opposition leader Maria Corina Machado from running and violated other parts of what U.S. officials said was agreed to in Barbados.

What happens next

In a controversial decision, the Venezuelan electoral council, under Maduro’s control, declared him the winner in the Sunday presidential elections with 51.2% of the votes despite credible polling indicating that the opposition candidate Gonzalez had won by an ample margin. The opposition quickly claimed fraud and provided paper copies verifying it had records of 80% of the votes and that Gonzalez had won easily.

Despite calls from several governments, the Venezuelan electoral council has not released a detailed tabulation of the vote. Instead, Maduro has asked the country’s supreme court, under his control, to audit the vote while his forces are cracking down on protesters and members of the opposition.

At least 16 people have died in the clashes, according to human rights groups.

The Biden administration responded cautiously to the unfolding situation in Venezuela, arguing U.S. efforts led to the elections taking place. Officials said they are “withholding judgment” until the electoral council release the vote details, which it has not done.

On Thursday, in a carefully worded statement, Secretary of State Antony Blinken finally acknowledged Gonzalez had won “the most votes” in the presidential election but fell short of recognizing him as president-elect.

On Wednesday, the top U.S. diplomat for Latin America, Assistant Secretary of State Brian Nichols, used stronger language, urging governments of the world to “acknowledge Edmundo González’s overwhelming electoral victory” or else risk “enabling Maduro and his representatives to attempt a massive fraud and disregard for the rule of law and democratic principles.”

The White House did not say what conditions would be needed for the U.S. to recognize Gonzalez as president-elect. On Thursday, a bipartisan group of senators led by Florida Republican Marco Rubio introduced a resolution recognizing Gonzalez as president-elect of Venezuela.

“The United States, along with democracies worldwide, can’t legitimize Maduro nor be complicit by remaining on the sidelines with an illegitimate narco-regime,” Rubio said. “The time has come for us to recognize the duly-democratically elected president of Venezuela, Edmundo González Urrutia.”

But on Wednesday, in the X publication containing the Qatar agreement document, Maduro said he was willing to continue negotiating with the United States.

“If the U.S. government is willing to respect sovereignty and stop threatening Venezuela, we can resume #Dialogue but based on a single point: Compliance with Qatar.”