The CIA, a Navy Seal and a $15m bounty. This alleged plot on Venezuela’s Maduro reads like a Hollywood script, for a reason

There’s more than meets the eye to Venezuela’s recent detention of four Americans.

It was the perfect feel-good story, just in time for Christmas. On December 20 last year, the United States secured from Venezuela the release of 10 US citizens – six of them wrongfully detained – in exchange for a close ally of authoritarian President Nicolas Maduro and a commitment from Caracas that it would stop detaining Americans to use as negotiating pawns. “The administration has made abundantly clear the expectation that additional Americans are not detained, and has secured commitments along those lines,” a cheerful US official announced at the time. That deal, which also included the extradition of a former military contractor known as “Fat Leonard” who orchestrated the largest corruption scandal in US Navy history, was hailed as a thawing of relations in the long-running standoff between the countries that has seen the US impose sanctions on Venezuela and accuse its leader of illegally usurping power, abusing human rights and trafficking drugs. But fast-forward to nearly a year later and the vibe has turned more Halloween trick than Christmas treat. Venezuela recently announced it had detained at least four US citizens, along with a handful of other foreign nationals, alleging they were part of an international conspiracy masterminded by the CIA and Spanish intelligence to overthrow Maduro.