Oct 14 (Reuters) - US President Donald Trump's administration has lifted sanctions on Jorge Rodriguez, the head of Venezuela's National Assembly and brother of the country's acting president, a notice posted on the US Treasury Department's website showed on Wednesday.
Rodriguez has led the Venezuelan legislature since 2021 and is a longtime political heavyweight, having served as vice president under late President Hugo Chavez and as communications minister, among other posts.
His sister Delcy Rodriguez
took power as acting president earlier this year after the US ousted President Nicolas Maduro, who is now awaiting trial on US charges.
Rodriguez, a 60-year-old psychiatrist, has led the government’s negotiating team in stop-and-start talks with the United States and Venezuela’s opposition. He is set to begin the latest round of talks on Wednesday with a faction of the opposition.
The discussions, backed by the US, are an effort to remake the country's political system ahead of elections, including reforms to its top court and its electoral authority.
The Venezuelan communications ministry, which handles all press queries for the government, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the lifting of sanctions on Rodriguez.
Acting President Rodriguez has promised, including in her recent remarks at the United Nations General Assembly, that the country will hold elections, but no firm date has been set. Opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Corina Machado has demanded they take place by July 2027.
Rodriguez has shepherded several major reforms through the ruling party-controlled legislature since his sister took power, including the law that facilitated the entry of more foreign oil companies, a similar law for the mining sector and an effort to allow private investment in the country's battered power grid.
Since Maduro's ouster, Caracas and Washington have cut a deal that gives the US access to 17 oilfields, while international energy firms have separately committed to expanding projects in the Latin American country. In August, Trump announced a plan to secure direct US access to a large share of Venezuela's vast oil to refill the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
The Rodriguez siblings are the children of leftist guerrilla fighter Jorge Antonio Rodriguez, who founded the revolutionary Socialist League Party and was arrested in 1976 for his alleged involvement in the kidnapping of an American businessman. He died in police custody after what his family alleges was torture.
(Reporting by Susan Heavey in Washington and Reuters; editing by Michelle Nichols and Sanjeev Miglani)
