Venezuela seizes HQ of anti-Maduro newspaper in defamation case

CARACAS – Venezuelan authorities yesterday seized the headquarters of a newspaper critical of President Nicolas Maduro’s government to cover US$13 million (RM53.63 million) in compensation that a court ordered it to pay to a top official in a defamation case.

“At this very moment, a judge surrounded by national guards entered the building of El Nacional to seize everything,” tweeted the paper’s president-director, Miguel Henrique Otero.

Last month, the Venezuelan Supreme Court of Justice ordered the daily to pay US$13.4 million for causing “serious moral damage” to Diosdado Cabello, the second-most-powerful person in the country after Maduro.

“The process of paying the compensation has begun,” Cabello tweeted.

In 2015, Cabello, who is second in command of the governing Socialist Party, took the newspaper to court for reproducing a report by Spanish paper ABC that accused him of links to drug trafficking.

El Nacional asked the Supreme Court to explain how it came to the astronomical figure of US$13 million, given that a previous decision in 2018 ordered the paper to pay one billion bolivars, worth around US$600 on the black market at the time.

The emblematic publication was founded in 1943 by Venezuelan writer Miguel Otero Silva, but ceased its print version in 2018 due to a lack of funds and paper, which is tightly controlled by the state, which limits it to friendly media.

It has spent two decades clashing with the Chavism movement of the late former president Hugo Chavez and his successor, Maduro, who accuses the outlet of conspiring with the opposition to overthrow him.

Having once employed 1,100 people and produced various sections including a magazine, El Nacional is now limited to 100 employees working on an online edition.

More than 100 news outlets have shut down since Maduro came to power, according to the Espacio Publico civil society group. – AFP, May 15, 2021