Britain said it would upgrade diplomatic relations with Venezuela and appoint an ambassador to Caracas, framing the move as a way to strengthen its ability to support a transition to democracy. The announcement landed while Venezuela’s government and a sector of the opposition resumed talks in Caracas on courts and elections, with the United States facilitating the process. The same old script, just with cleaner language: foreign capitals, local elites, and ordinary people left to live under the results.
Who Gets to Negotiate
The opposition delegation was led by Dinorah Figuera, once head of the 2015-elected National Assembly, who flew into Caracas on Sunday and landed at Simón Bolívar International Airport with several fellow delegates. The core team also included Ramón López, Jorge Millán, Juan Miguel Matheus, Marco Aurelio Quiñones and Sergio Vergara, backed by a four-member technical commission. María Corina Machado and Edmundo González Urrutia were not part of the US-brokered talks.
Figuera said the goal was to “lay the foundations for an electoral process” that reflects what Venezuelans actually want. Millán said the aim was a Supreme Court with judges who are “honorable, independent and impartial.” Those are the words on the table. The machinery behind them is another matter.
Machado said her separate conversations with the US State Department pointed to a new CNE before year-end, and she described Washington’s approach as moving through three phases: stabilization, economic recovery and democratic transition. In her view, the stabilization phase had already ended. That’s the language of managed change, with the state and its foreign partners deciding the pace.
Courts, Elections, and the Same Old Gatekeepers
The first round of talks, held in August, produced an agreement on reinstitutionalizing the Supreme Court and on a mechanism for appointing 32 magistrates across six chambers. That round also touched the Hate Law, the NGO Control Law and a counterterrorism statute, which the opposition wants revised or repealed. The second round turned to political and civil guarantees, freedom of expression and the broader electoral path. Negotiators could announce a new Supreme Court mechanism as soon as next week, and no fixed date had been set for naming new CNE leadership.
The dispute over Machado remained a sticking point. The opposition wants the Comptroller’s Office bans that blocked her from running lifted outright, while the government treats the TSJ’s disqualification rulings as settled matters, or “cosa juzgada,” and has floated a broader pardon framework instead of reviewing individual cases. Political analysts Ricardo Ríos and Guillermo Tell Aveledo called August’s outcome a set of “moderate achievements,” and civil society groups had urged negotiators to move faster on both the CNE and the TSJ.
That’s the reform trap in plain sight. The talks circle around courts, councils, bans and pardons, while the people most affected are asked to wait for institutions to sort themselves out.
Contracts, Kickbacks, and the Food Line
At the same time, Alex Saab, a close ally of former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, pleaded guilty Tuesday to a single count of money laundering tied to an alleged bribery conspiracy to win lucrative government contracts in Venezuela. Saab, 54, agreed to cooperate in continuing federal investigations and to forfeit $195 million in criminal proceeds. Prosecutors said the money laundering offense carries a maximum 20-year penalty, but they agreed to recommend a sentence at the low end of the range and seek additional reductions if his cooperation proves substantial.
Saab was deported in May by Venezuela’s acting President Delcy Rodriguez to the United States, which has targeted the Colombian-born businessman for more than a decade. He had been charged during the first Trump administration in 2019 and arrested during a refueling stop in Cape Verde while on what the Venezuelan government described as a high-level humanitarian mission to Iran. President Joe Biden pardoned Saab in 2023 in exchange for the release of several imprisoned Americans in Venezuela, a deal that Republicans and federal law enforcement officials criticized.
U.S. officials have long described Saab as Maduro’s “bag man,” and prosecutors said the new indictment centers on contracts for the so-called CLAP program, set up by Maduro to provide rice, corn flour and cooking oil to poor Venezuelans during hyperinflation and a crumbling currency. In an eight-page statement of facts, Saab admitted to skimming at least $195 million from at least six contracts awarded to companies he controlled to import food and medicine.
Prosecutors said the scheme had the approval, participation and protection of some of the Venezuelan government’s highest-ranking public authorities, including an individual identified only as “Government Official 1A,” who designated a surrogate to receive bribe payments. Former Gov. Jose Gregorio Vielma Mora, described as a Maduro ally, also received $17 million in kickbacks, prosecutors alleged, and was previously charged in the conspiracy in 2021. Saab said he and his associates falsified shipping records and set up shell companies and bank accounts in Antigua, Bulgaria, Liechtenstein, the Marshall Islands, Montenegro, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United Arab Emirates. He also told Judge Kathleen Williams that he takes Zoloft and other medicines daily for what he described as “post-traumatic stress disorder” following his 2020 arrest.
Sanctions, Oil, and the Price of Access
The new U.S. prosecution of Saab and Maduro is taking place as the Trump administration overhauls relations with Venezuela and focuses on tapping the country’s oil reserves. This month, Trump announced a partnership with Venezuelan oil entrepreneur Alejandro Betancourt in which the U.S. government will gain a stake and access to at-cost crude shipments from oil fields with a potential to produce 65 billion barrels. Rodríguez, then serving as Maduro’s vice president, had earlier led an international campaign calling Saab an “innocent Venezuelan diplomat” who had been illegally “kidnapped” by the United States, but after Maduro’s capture she distanced herself from him, firing him from her Cabinet and stripping him of his role as the main conduit for foreign companies looking to invest in Venezuela.
The U.S. Treasury also updated its sanctions license governing Citgo, affecting board control as part of ongoing Venezuela sanctions. The move added another layer of pressure as Caracas, Washington and other foreign governments continued to navigate diplomacy, sanctions and domestic political talks. The people at the bottom get the bills, the shortages, the controls and the speeches. The people at the top keep negotiating over who gets to manage the wreckage.