The U.S. gov­ern­ment on Thurs­day re­spond­ed to Venezuela’s dis­put­ed Ju­ly pres­i­den­tial elec­tion by im­pos­ing sanc­tions against 16 al­lies of Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro, ac­cus­ing them of ob­struct­ing the vote and car­ry­ing out hu­man rights abus­es.

Those tar­get­ed by the Trea­sury De­part­ment in­clude the head of the coun­try’s high court, lead­ers of state se­cu­ri­ty forces and pros­e­cu­tors. The move came days af­ter the de­par­ture in­to ex­ile of Ed­mun­do González Ur­ru­tia, the for­mer diplo­mat who rep­re­sent­ed the main op­po­si­tion par­ties and claimed to have won the Ju­ly 28 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion by a wide mar­gin.

Venezuela’s elec­toral au­thor­i­ties de­clared Maduro the vic­tor hours af­ter polls closed, but un­like pre­vi­ous pres­i­den­tial elec­tions, they nev­er re­leased de­tailed vote tal­lies to back up their claim ar­gu­ing that the Na­tion­al Elec­toral Coun­cil’s web­site was hacked. To the sur­prise of sup­port­ers and op­po­nents, González and op­po­si­tion leader Maria Co­ri­na Macha­do short­ly af­ter­ward an­nounced not on­ly that their cam­paign had ob­tained vote tal­lies from over two-thirds of the elec­tron­ic vot­ing ma­chines used in the elec­tion but al­so that they had pub­lished them on­line to show the world that Maduro had lost.

Glob­al con­dem­na­tion over the lack of trans­paren­cy prompt­ed Maduro to ask Venezuela’s high court, stacked with rul­ing par­ty loy­al­ists, to au­dit the re­sults. The court reaf­firmed his vic­to­ry.

Ex­perts from the Unit­ed Na­tions and the Carter Cen­ter, which ob­served the elec­tion at the in­vi­ta­tion of Maduro’s gov­ern­ment, de­ter­mined the re­sults an­nounced by elec­toral au­thor­i­ties lacked cred­i­bil­i­ty. The U.N. ex­perts stopped short of val­i­dat­ing the op­po­si­tion’s claim to vic­to­ry but said the fac­tion’s vot­ing records pub­lished on­line ap­pear to ex­hib­it all of the orig­i­nal se­cu­ri­ty fea­tures.

“Rather than re­spect­ing the will of the Venezue­lan peo­ple as ex­pressed at the bal­lot box, Maduro and his rep­re­sen­ta­tives have false­ly claimed vic­to­ry while re­press­ing and in­tim­i­dat­ing the de­mo­c­ra­t­ic op­po­si­tion in an il­le­git­i­mate at­tempt to cling to pow­er by force,” Sec­re­tary of State Antony Blinken said in a state­ment.

The State De­part­ment said it is plac­ing new visa re­stric­tions on Maduro al­lies who are ac­cused of im­ped­ing the vote and re­press­ing Venezue­lans. The de­part­ment did not name those in­di­vid­u­als.

The po­ten­tial ef­fect of the in­di­vid­ual sanc­tions and visa re­stric­tions an­nounced Thurs­day is un­clear. Pre­vi­ous­ly pun­ished Maduro loy­al­ists still play key roles in Venezuela’s gov­ern­ment, in­clud­ing as vice pres­i­dent, at­tor­ney gen­er­al and de­fense min­is­ter.

A se­nior Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion of­fi­cial told re­porters that the U.S. ex­pects the lat­est an­nounce­ment to “prompt deep­er re­flec­tion” among the Maduro al­lies about how far they will go to help him in his ef­fort to stay in pow­er. The of­fi­cial spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty un­der ground rules set by the ad­min­is­tra­tion.

The Trea­sury has pe­nal­ized more than 140 cur­rent or for­mer Venezue­lan of­fi­cials. The State De­part­ment has iden­ti­fied near­ly 2,000 peo­ple as pos­si­bly fac­ing visa re­stric­tions over al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion, un­der­min­ing democ­ra­cy or vi­o­lat­ing Venezue­lans’ hu­man rights.

Venezuela’s gov­ern­ment re­leased a state­ment that char­ac­ter­ized the lat­est set of sanc­tions as a “rude act that seeks to in­gra­ti­ate it­self with a po­lit­i­cal class that has re­sort­ed to fas­cist and vi­o­lent prac­tices to over­throw, with­out suc­cess,” Maduro.

A joint state­ment from more than 50 coun­tries that was de­liv­ered Thurs­day at the Unit­ed Na­tions by Pana­ma’s for­eign min­is­ter, Javier Martínez-Acha Vásquez, called on Venezuela’s Na­tion­al Elec­toral Coun­cil “to im­me­di­ate­ly pub­lish” the tal­ly sheets and “al­low for the im­par­tial ver­i­fi­ca­tion of re­sults by in­de­pen­dent ob­servers to pro­mote cred­i­bil­i­ty, le­git­i­ma­cy, and a trans­par­ent elec­toral process.”

The sig­na­to­ries, in­clud­ing the U.S., Spain, Chile and South Ko­rea, al­so de­nounced the re­pres­sion mea­sures that Maduro’s gov­ern­ment has been ac­cused of car­ry­ing out af­ter the elec­tion, in­clud­ing ar­bi­trary de­ten­tions, in­tim­i­da­tion tac­tics and killings.

“We ex­press deep con­cern with the po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed ar­rest war­rant by Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties” that was is­sued Sept. 3 for González and “has forced him in­to ex­ile,” ac­cord­ing to the state­ment.

González, in a state­ment post­ed on X, tried to re­as­sure vot­ers of his pledge to see a gov­ern­ment tran­si­tion in Venezuela.

“My com­mit­ment to the man­date I have re­ceived from the sov­er­eign peo­ple of Venezuela is un­wa­ver­ing,” he wrote. “The bat­tle that Maria Co­ri­na Macha­do and I have led re­mains un­wa­ver­ing.” —MEX­I­CO CITY (AP)

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Sto­ry by REGI­NA GAR­CIA CANO | As­so­ci­at­ed Press