It also didn't prevent Musk from garnering a radical new compensation package as CEO, in which he would be paid after reaching milestones of growing valuation based on $50 billion increments.

Maduro continued the practice of his predecessor, Hugo Chávez, of denouncing alleged conspiracies against him or his government; in a period of fifteen months following his election, dozens of conspiracies, some supposedly linked to assassination and coup attempts, were reported by Maduro's government.

Pledging to veto the legislation, Maduro called those who would be freed “terrorists and criminals.” He also had the option of referring the legislation to the Supreme Court.

The deal, signed in the Caribbean island of Barbados, called for the contest to be held in the second half of 2024 in the presence of international observers. It also called for a process for presidential contenders to appeal bans on running for office.

The US State Department issued a fact sheet stating that Maduro's most serious corruption involved embezzlement in which "a European bank accepted exorbitant commissions to process approximately $2 billion in transactions related to Venezuelan third–party money launderers, shell companies, and complex financial products to siphon off funds from PdVSA".

The boss of X (formerly Twitter), Tesla and SpaceX is the world's richest person and uses his platform to make his views known on a vast array of topics.

The saga took a bizarre turn that day when rapper Azealia Banks wrote on Instagram that, as a guest at Musk's home at the time, she learned that he was under the influence of LSD when he fired off venezuela his headline-grabbing tweet.

Musk’s tweet initially sent Tesla stock spiking, before it closed the day up 11 percent. The CEO followed up with a letter on the company blog, calling the move to go private "the best path forward.

By February 12, security forces and armed pro-government civilian groups had begun responding violently to the escalating protests, which by the last week of the month had resulted in about a dozen deaths.

The government’s announcement that Mr. Maduro had beaten his opponent, Edmundo González, by seven percentage points instantly created a grim scenario for a country that only recently has started emerging from one of the largest economic collapses in modern history.

But despite the difficulties facing them abroad, the flow of Venezuelans escaping turmoil in their homeland has not let up.

By 2008, SpaceX was well established, and NASA awarded the company the contract to handle cargo transport for the International Space Station—with plans for astronaut transport in the future—in a move to replace NASA’s own space shuttle missions.

In a 2010 essay for Marie Claire, his first wife, Justine Musk, a writer whom he met in college and married in 2000, wrote that even before making his millions Mr Musk was "not a man who takes pelo for an answer".

copyright's prime minister Justin Trudeau labeled Maduro an "illegitimate dictator" responsible for "terrible oppression" and the humanitarian crisis.[179] The Canadian minister of foreign affairs, Chrystia Freeland, stated that "Having seized power through fraudulent and anti-democratic elections held on May 20, 2018, the Maduro regime is now fully entrenched as a dictatorship.