CARACAS: Venezuelan Vice President Tareck El Aissami hit back Tuesday at the United States for labeling him a major drug trafficker and slapping sanctions on him, calling the accusations a "vile attack."
"I take this miserable and vile attack as recognition of my status as an anti-imperialist revolutionary," El Aissami, the heir apparent to Socialist President Nicolas Maduro, wrote on Twitter.
The US Treasury Department on Monday accused El Aissami and an ally, businessman Samark Jose Lopez Bello, of being drug kingpins, freezing their US assets.
"Let's not let these vile provocations distract us. Our main job is to accompany Nicolas Maduro in (Venezuela's) economic recovery," El Aissami tweeted.
"We must concentrate on the revolutionary government's priorities: economic recovery and growth and guaranteeing PEACE and social happiness."
He added a shout-out to late leftist firebrand Hugo Chavez, Maduro's predecessor and the man who launched Venezuela on the path of socialist "revolution" in 1999.
"Long live CHAVEZ!!" he wrote.
The US accused El Aissami of protecting and overseeing large shipments of drugs from Venezuela to Mexico and the United States while serving as the country's interior minister and governor of Aragua state.
El Aissami -- who became the troubled South American country's vice president on January 4 -- was allegedly in the pay of Venezuelan drug kingpin Walid Makled Garcia to protect shipments, and coordinated them with Mexico's violent Los Zetas cartel, the Treasury said.
The move cast a dark shadow over El Aissami, 42, a former minister under Chavez.
The vice president, who was born in Merida state, made a name for himself in Venezuela by cracking down on drug gangs.
But he has also helped Maduro take action against the political opposition in the country.
In a January 31 decree, Maduro granted El Aissami expansive new powers to seize property and approve ministers' budgets.
Venezuela is lurching through an economic nightmare of food shortages and hyperinflation brought on by low prices for its key export, oil.
Maduro, whose popularity has fallen to 20 percent, is fending off opposition attempts to oust him.
He blames the economic crisis on a capitalist conspiracy backed by Washington. Opponents blame the failure of an oil-dependent socialist economic model.
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