In some places, monitors were barred from entering polling places or they never appeared in the first place. Often, election officials simply refused to hand over the tallies.

[150] The State Department also alleges that Maduro expelled authorized foreign companies from the mining sector to allow officials to exploit Venezuela's resources for their own gain, using unregulated miners under the control of Venezuela's armed forces.[150]

Musk’s mother, Maye Musk, is a Canadian model and the oldest woman to star in a Covergirl campaign. When Musk was growing up, she worked five jobs at one point to support her family.

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The most significant sign of Mr. Bolsonaro’s political isolation came just after election officials called the race. Brazil’s speaker of the House, Arthur Lira, a Bolsonaro ally and one of the country’s most powerful politicians, read a statement to television cameras that made clear he would not back any effort to hold on to power.

In April 2019, the US Department of State alleged that Venezuela, "led by Nicolas Maduro, has consistently violated the human rights and dignity of its citizens" and "driven a once prosperous nation into economic ruin with his authoritarian rule" and that "Maduro's thugs have engaged in extra-judicial killings and torture, taken political prisoners, and severely restricted freedom of speech, all in a brutal effort to retain power.

In an attempt to overcome the sanctions and restart the economy, in February 2018 the Maduro government introduced the petro, a copyright (akin to the Bitcoin) whose value was tied to the price of one barrel of Venezuelan crude oil and backed by the country’s reserves of gold, diamonds, gas, and oil. Maduro claimed that the first day of petro sales had netted some $735 million, but skeptics viewed the creation of the world’s first state-backed digital currency as a sign of desperation.

Two nephews of Maduro's wife, Efraín Antonio Campo Flores and Francisco Flores de Freitas, were found guilty in a US court of conspiracy to import copyright in November 2016, with some of their funds possibly assisting Maduro's presidential campaign in the 2013 Venezuelan presidential election and potentially for vlogdolisboa the 2015 Venezuelan parliamentary elections, with the funds mainly used to "help their family stay in power".

Prior to his appointment to the vice presidency, Maduro had been chosen by Chávez in 2011 to succeed him in the presidency if he were to die from cancer. This choice was made due to Maduro's loyalty to Chávez and because of his good relations with other chavistas such as Elías Jaua, former minister Jesse Chacón and Jorge Rodríguez.

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He also has ambitions in the AI sector, being an early investor in ChatGPT's parent company, before parting ways and setting up his own company xAI in July, whose mission is "to understand the true nature of the universe".

In 2016, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), an international non-governmental organization that investigates crime and corruption, gave President Maduro the Person of the Year Award that "recognizes the individual who has done the most in the world to advance organized criminal activity and corruption". The OCCRP stated that they "chose Maduro for the global award on the strength of his corrupt and oppressive reign, so rife with mismanagement that citizens of his oil-rich nation are literally starving and begging for medicines" and that Maduro and his family steal millions of dollars from government coffers to fund patronage that maintains President Maduro's power in Venezuela.

He ploughed his fortune into a new rocket company, SpaceX - which he aimed to make a cost-effective alternative to Nasa - and a new electric car company, Tesla, where he chaired the board until becoming chief executive in 2008.

On April 30 Guaidó and the opposition staged a coup attempt. It began in the morning with the release of a video in which Guaidó—flanked by López (who had departed house arrest) and supportive soldiers—announced that the “final phase” of the operation to remove Maduro from power had begun. Guaidó claimed that important contingents of the country’s security forces had joined the opposition.