The US has an­nounced an in­creased $25 mil­lion (£20.4 mil­lion) re­ward for in­for­ma­tion lead­ing to the ar­rest of Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro on the day he was sworn in for a third six-year term in of­fice.

The in­au­gu­ra­tion cer­e­mo­ny was over­shad­owed by re­crim­i­na­tion from the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty and Venezue­lan op­po­si­tion lead­ers.

Re­wards have al­so been of­fered for in­for­ma­tion lead­ing to the ar­rest and/or con­vic­tion of In­te­ri­or Min­is­ter Dios­da­do Ca­bel­lo.

A new re­ward of up to $15 mil­lion for De­fence Min­is­ter Vladimir Padri­no has al­so been of­fered.

The UK al­so is­sued sanc­tions on 15 top Venezue­lan of­fi­cials, in­clud­ing judges, mem­bers of the se­cu­ri­ty forces and mil­i­tary of­fi­cials.

The For­eign, Com­mon­wealth and De­vel­op­ment Of­fice said those sanc­tioned were re­spon­si­ble for “un­der­min­ing democ­ra­cy, the rule of law, and hu­man rights vi­o­la­tions”.

For­eign Sec­re­tary David Lam­my went on to de­scribe Maduro’s regime as “fraud­u­lent”.

Mean­while, in Venezuela, Maduro was sworn in for a third term—un­til 2031, at the leg­isla­tive palace, where he de­liv­ered a fiery speech as he was heav­i­ly guard­ed by po­lice, mil­i­tary and in­tel­li­gence of­fi­cers.

Crowds of peo­ple, many sport­ing pro-Maduro t-shirts, gath­ered in ad­ja­cent streets and a near­by plaza.

Maduro ac­cused the op­po­si­tion of try­ing to turn his in­au­gu­ra­tion in­to a “world war,” and said the fac­tion’s fail­ure to stop the in­au­gu­ra­tion was “a great Venezue­lan vic­to­ry.” He ac­cused ex­ter­nal pow­ers of “at­tack­ing” Venezuela, specif­i­cal­ly the US gov­ern­ment, and promised to guar­an­tee “peace and na­tion­al sov­er­eign­ty.”

“To­day, more than ever, I feel the weight of com­mit­ment, the pow­er that I rep­re­sent, the pow­er that the con­sti­tu­tion grants me,” he said. “I have not been made pres­i­dent by the gov­ern­ment of the Unit­ed States, nor by the pro-im­pe­ri­al­ist gov­ern­ments of Latin Amer­i­ca.”

The op­po­si­tion col­lect­ed tal­ly sheets from more than 80 per cent of elec­tron­ic vot­ing ma­chines fol­low­ing the Ju­ly 28 elec­tion, post­ed the tal­lies on­line and said they show González won twice as many votes as Maduro. The US-based Carter Cen­ter, which ob­served the elec­tion on the gov­ern­ment’s in­vi­ta­tion, de­clared the op­po­si­tion-pub­lished tal­lies le­git­i­mate. (BBC&AP)