President Joe Biden announced the release of seven American civilians, some of whom had been held in Venezuela since as far back as 2017, in exchange for two drug dealers who are related to Venezuela’s first lady, CNN reports.
Jorge Toledo, Tomeu Vadell, Alirio Zambrano, Jose Luis Zambrano, and Jose Pereira were executives for oil company Citgo when they were detained reportedly for signing an agreement “unfavorable” to the Venezuelan government, which controls the company. The last member of the so-called “Citgo 6” was released in March. Matthew Heath was detained in September 2020; Osman Khan was arrested in January of this year.
In exchange, the United States released two Venezuelans known as the “Narco nephews” because of their relationship to Cilia Flores, the wife of Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro and the First Lady of the nation. The two men, Efraín Antonio Campo Flores and Francisco Flores de Freitas, were convicted in 2016 of conspiring to smuggle more than 800 kilograms of cocaine into the United States.