News / Venezuela

Venezuela renegade figure’s advisers resign after botched op to kidnap Maduro

Tuesday, 12 May 2020 7:32 AM [ Last Update: Tuesday, 12 May 2020 8:19 AM ]

Members of the Venezuelan special forces unit are seen at a shore, after foiling a mercenary incursion, in Macuto, Venezuela, on May 3, 2020. (Photo by Reuters)

Two US-based advisers to Venezuela’s opposition figure Juan Guaido have resigned after a failed attack by an American “security” firm to kidnap the Latin American country’s elected president.

Guaido’s press team said on Monday that he had accepted the resignations of Juan Rendon and Sergio Vergara, without offering a reason for their resignation from the opposition’s “crisis strategy commission.”

Rendon has admitted to discussing the plot to oust Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro with the Florida-based Silvercorp USA — a firm similar to the infamous Blackwater (now renamed). But he claims that, while he negotiated a deal with Silvercorp late last year, he disassociated himself from its chief executive, US Army veteran and ex-Green Beret Jordan Goudreau, later in November.

Goudreau has claimed responsibility for an improbable incursion by his operatives via Colombia into Venezuela on May 3 that was apparently aimed at kidnapping Maduro and that was foiled by the Venezuelan army on Venezuelan shores.

US mercenary says group plotted to seize Venezuela's presidential palace

An American soldier of fortune captured during a botched attempt to seize Venezuela’s leader claims his group had plotted to raid Nicolas Maduro’s presidential palace.

The Venezuelan military killed eight members of the mercenary group and captured 12 others, including two American citizens.

Rendon and Vergara, meanwhile, confirmed their resignations in public letters, with Rendon further claiming that the commission had never been interested in “participating in violent activities.” Vergada also claimed that he had not been aware of the operation.

Guaido, too, has denied involvement in the botched operation.

But Venezuela had earlier identified Rendon and Vergara as having been involved, and the country’s chief prosecutor has already demanded their extradition, along with Goudreau.