The U.S. Department of the Treasury removed Jorge Rodríguez, President of the National Assembly of Venezuela, from its list of Specially Designated Nationals, thereby lifting the sanctions against the brother of the interim president Delcy Rodríguez.
The measure was published by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), which removed the name of the Chavista leader under the five variants in which it appeared in the registry, without providing a public explanation for the reasons behind the decision.
Jorge Rodríguez had been included on that list in September 2018, along with his sister Delcy, the First Lady Cilia Flores, and then-Minister of Defense Vladimir Padrino López, as part of a coordinated action against the inner circle of President Nicolás Maduro.
The lifting of their sanctions completes the unlocking of the two brothers who currently hold executive and legislative power in Venezuela: Delcy was removed from the OFAC list on April 1 of this year, just three months after Maduro's capture.
Jorge Rodríguez is the central figure in the transition dialogue that Washington is promoting between chavismo and a opposition bloc led by Dinorah Figuera.
That process was formally established in August at the La Carlota airbase in Caracas, where the parties signed a joint declaration that includes the renewal of the Supreme Court of Justice and a mechanism for oversight.
The decision is part of an accelerated normalization process between Washington and Caracas that began following Maduro's capture on January 3, 2026.
Since then, the administration Trump formally recognized Delcy Rodríguez as head of State, restored diplomatic relations with Venezuela—broken since 2019—and announced in August a historic oil agreement that grants U.S. companies access to 17 fields with estimated reserves of 65 billion barrels and a projected investment of over 100 billion dollars.
In parallel, the Trump administration has relaxed sanctions related to the oil and mining operations of the South American country, marking a significant shift from the maximum pressure policy that Washington maintained for years against chavismo.
The normalization process, however, has not benefited the entire Venezuelan opposition.
María Corina Machado, Nobel Peace Prize 2025 and the main reference of the opposition not included in the dialogue, remains in Panama and has reported that the chavista authorities are preventing her from returning to Venezuela, with at least seven documented failed attempts up until the end of September.
Machado is not participating in the negotiations led by Jorge Rodríguez for Chavismo, and her de facto exclusion from the process represents the main point of friction in Venezuelan politics at this moment.
The dialogue between chavismo and the opposition continues its course with Jorge Rodríguez as the key negotiator, now without the restrictions that his inclusion on the U.S. Treasury's sanctions list imposed on him for eight years.
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