How Britain helped Trump destabilise Venezuela

During the early hours of Saturday morning, US forces bombed Venezuela and kidnapped its president, Nicolás Maduro.

This was a clear breach of international law, violating the terms of the UN charter which prohibit interference in and the use of force against sovereign states.

Yet Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer, has refused to condemn the attack or even acknowledge its brazen illegality.

“I want to get all the material facts together and we simply haven’t got the full picture at the moment”, the prime minister told the BBC on Saturday.

Starmer then wrote on social media that Britain “regarded Maduro as an illegitimate President and we shed no tears about the end of his regime”.

By contrast, it took him less than 24 hours to call Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine a “war of aggression”.

Former British ambassador Sir Richard Dalton told Declassified the government has failed to stand up against “the law of the jungle” with its “cynical” stance on Venezuela.

While refusing to condemn Trump’s actions, Starmer insisted there “was no UK involvement in this operation”.

Royal Navy personnel have nonetheless been embedded in the US armada surrounding Venezuela over recent weeks, with the Ministry of Defence refusing to clarify whether they were present during the attack.

Defence secretary John Healey apparently ordered them not to take part in strikes on Venezuela and US-UK intelligence sharing was reportedly frozen in the Caribbean in order to avoid British complicity in breaches of international law.

This is in sharp contrast with the government’s current position that it cannot adjudicate on the legality of Trump’s actions.

But even if British forces did not directly participate in the military operation, the UK government has been quietly backing Washington’s destabilisation efforts in Venezuela for years.

Since 2019, Britain has frozen over $2 billion of Venezuelan gold in the Bank of England, sponsored anti-government initiatives, and even set up a secret “Venezuela Reconstruction Unit” to plan for the day after Maduro’s overthrow.

Starmer is therefore not speaking in abstract terms when he says “the UK has long supported a transition of power in Venezuela”.

Recognising Juan Guaidó

Seven years ago, the UK government made the bold decision to recognise a politician named Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s president.

Guaidó had never run for presidential office.

Yet on 23 January 2019, he swore himself in as Venezuela’s “interim president”, using Article 233 of the Venezuelan constitution to declare that Maduro had abandoned his post and thereby left an “absolute vacuum of power”.

This vacuum, claimed Guaidó, would need to be filled by the president of Venezuela’s National Assembly – a post occupied by Guaidó.

Without the support of the US government, Guaidó’s legal gymnastics would probably not have gotten him very far.

However, the Donald Trump administration moved quickly to recognise Guaidó, and began pressuring the so-called “international community” to follow suit.

On 24 January, Britain’s then foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt visited Washington, attending a “mid-morning meeting with [US secretary of state] Mike Pompeo, and then Vice-pres Mike Pence”.

During this meeting, Hunt surprised everyone by “suddenly saying that we will consider recognising Guaidó”, according to former foreign minister Alan Duncan.

Duncan’s published diaries note how, the next day, Hunt said “we need to use Venezuela as an issue on which we can be as fully in line with the US as possible, because [Hunt] is out of line on a number of issues such as Syria”.

Weeks earlier, Hunt had vocally disagreed with Trump’s plans to pull US troops out of Syria.

Duncan’s diary entry continued: “It’s one of those trade-off moments which we need if we are to handle the Trump administration cleverly”.

Apparently quoting Hunt, Duncan added: “Venezuela is in their back yard, and it’s probably the only foreign adventure they might just pursue”.

Hunt thus seemingly viewed recognising Guaidó as a means of currying favour with Trump, but Britain also has longstanding interests in the region’s oil reserves.

“The revival of the oil industry [in Venezuela] will be an essential element in any [economic] recovery, and I can imagine that British companies like Shell and BP will want to be part of it”, Duncan had declared in 2018.

British firms are also interested in neighbouring Guyana, which has an ongoing border dispute with Venezuela over the oil-rich Essequibo region.

In January 2019, Guaidó’s representative in London, Vanessa Neumann, was recorded saying the “number one issue identified by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office is that they won’t support us while we continue with the official line, that we want to take back the Essequibo from Guyana”.

Neumann thus instructed her fellow adviser to “drop the topic” of Venezuela’s claim to the region in exchange for Britain’s support for the coup.

Freezing Venezuela’s gold

Britain’s recognition of Guaidó was a key prerequisite for the Bank of England’s decision to freeze Venezuela’s gold in 2019 – a major British contribution to Washington’s coup efforts.

According to the former US national security adviser John Bolton, Hunt was “delighted” to help with Washington’s destabilisation campaign, “for example freezing Venezuelan gold deposits in the Bank of England”.

The Bank’s directors were uneasy about the legal implications of freezing a foreign state’s assets, but the Foreign Office worked to ease their nerves.

On 25 January 2019, Duncan wrote in his diary that he held a phone call with Mark Carney, then the Governor of the Bank of England, about Venezuela’s gold:

“I tell Carney that I fully appreciate that, although it’s a decision for the Bank, he needs a measure of political air cover from us. I tell him I will write him the most robust letter I can get through the FCO lawyers, and it will outline the growing doubts over Maduro’s legitimacy and explain that many countries no longer consider him to be the country’s President”.

In other words, the Bank of England required a robust legal rationale for keeping Venezuela’s gold frozen, and the Foreign Office was happy to provide it with one.

In May 2020, the Maduro government sued the Bank of England over its refusal to release the gold.

When the issue moved to the courts, the UK government supported Guaidó by re-emphasising its recognition of him, with the Foreign Office even spending £80,697 to promote his legal campaign.

This was despite repeated condemnations from UN special rapporteur Alena Douhan on the negative impact of unilateral sanctions on Venezuela.

In 2021, for instance, Douhan noted the “repeated refusals of banks in the… United Kingdom… to release Venezuelan assets even for buying medicine, vaccines and protective kits” during the Covid-19 pandemic.

With each hearing, Guaidó and his representatives also incurred substantial costs, with published accounts suggesting Guaidó’s team spent over $8.5m on legal fees – roughly £7m.

Remarkably, Guaidó’s UK legal fees were paid with money which was originally appropriated from the Venezuelan state in the US.

Venezuela Reconstruction Unit

After freezing Venezuela’s gold, the UK government set up a secretive “Venezuela Reconstruction Unit [VRU]” in Autumn 2019.

The VRU was located in the Foreign Office and directed by diplomat John Saville, with three other members of staff attached to it, one of whom was an “external consultant”.

Apparently tasked with planning for the day after Maduro’s overthrow, the VRU met with Guaidó in London in January 2020 and “had contact” with other members of his team, including Neumann.

After the VRU was exposed, the Foreign Office claimed the team had been established to “coordinate the UK approach to the international response to the dire economic and humanitarian situation in Venezuela”.

But documents obtained by Declassified exposed Saville holding meetings in Caracas to plan for UK involvement in Venezuela’s energy sector.

A whole day of meetings was scheduled for the topic of “UK involvement in the energy sector” of Venezuela, though the full agenda remains classified for reasons of “national security”.

Meanwhile, the Foreign Office funded an “anti-corruption” coalition in Venezuela to the tune of £450,000, with the money drawn from the controversial Conflict, Stability and Security Fund.

Following this reporting, the British embassy in Caracas complained internally that: “Articles on our programmes/operations here (particularly from McEvoy) are particularly sensitive”.

The Foreign Office is now refusing to disclose which non-governmental organisations it has been funding in Venezuela over recent years.

It justified this by saying information which “would be likely to prejudice relations between the United Kingdom and [an]other state” needs to remain confidential.