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The United States authorized the Venezuelan government this Saturday to pay the legal fees for the lawyers defending Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores in the drug trafficking case they are facing in New York, according to a court document published by the EFE agency.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the Department of the Treasury issued amended licenses that establish specific conditions for payments: funds must be available to the Venezuelan government after March 5, 2026 and cannot be derived from Foreign Government Deposit Funds.
The document states that these licenses authorize defense attorneys "to receive payments from the Government of Venezuela under certain conditions, including the condition that authorized payments are made with funds available to the Government of Venezuela after March 5, 2026; and that authorized payments do not stem from Foreign Government Deposit Funds."
The decision represents a significant shift in the strategy of the Department of Justice and the Trump administration, which had previously blocked access to those funds citing national security and foreign policy reasons.
The defense attorney for Maduro, Barry Pollack, had repeatedly argued that the inability to receive payments from the Venezuelan government violated the Sixth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees the right of every accused person to choose their legal representative.
Pollack warned the court that if the funding issue was not resolved, he would request to withdraw from the case, leaving Maduro without representation at a critical stage of the process.
On March 26, during a second hearing at the Southern District Court of New York, Judge Alvin Hellerstein, aged 92, expressed skepticism regarding the prosecution's stance and pointed out that, following Maduro's capture and transfer to the United States, the couple no longer represented “a threat to national security”, although he refused to dismiss the case.
The OFAC had granted an initial license on January 9, 2026 for Venezuela to finance Maduro's defense, but revoked it hours later citing national security reasons.
Maduro, 63 years old, and Flores, 69, were captured on January 3, 2026 in Caracas during the "Operation Absolute Resolution," carried out by the Delta Force unit of the U.S. Army with support from the CIA, and were transported to a federal prison in Brooklyn.
Both have pleaded "not guilty" to charges that include conspiracy to commit narco-terrorism, cocaine importation, money laundering, and corruption—offenses that could result in life imprisonment.
In April, Judge Hellerstein also prohibited the defense from sharing evidence with non-detained co-defendants, such as Diosdado Cabello, considering that "it is not necessary to share this evidence to prepare the defense."
The formal trial against the couple is not expected to begin for another one or two years.
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