VENEZUELA has denounced a “crude propaganda operation” by the White House after the United States offered a $50 million (£37m) reward for the arrest of President Nicolas Maduro.

The sum is double that previously offered for the arrest of the Venezuelan leader, whom Washington accuses without evidence of trafficking fentanyl-laced cocaine into the US. The $25m reward was offered by the Joe Biden presidency — hostility to Venezuela’s socialist governments having been common to US administrations of both main parties.

In 2014, then president Barack Obama declared Venezuela an “unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security of the United States” and, in 2020, his successor Donald Trump appeared to endorse an abortive attempt to overthrow the Venezuelan government by two former special forces soldiers.

Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yvan Gil dismised the latest stunt as “pathetic” and referenced US Attorney General Pam Bondi’s previous promise to release a secret list of associates of paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, which the Justice Department now says doesn’t exist, sparking a backlash against her in her own country.

“Her show is a joke, a desperate distraction from her own misery,” Mr Gil said.