VENEZUELAN Vice-President Tareck El Aissami hit back at US sanctions imposed on him with a full-page advert published in the New York Times on Wednesday.

The US Treasury slapped the sanctions on him over allegations that he was involved in drug smuggling and had aided Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah — claims gleaned from a series of sensationalist reports by the Associated Press (AP) news agency.

A group of 34 US Congress members from both parties wrote to President Donald Trump two weeks ago urging action based on those reports — a letter that was leaked to AP.

Mr Aissami wrote in his open letter to US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin that Washington was acting “as an extraterritorial police and without having powers to do so.”

He said: “You have been deceived by political sectors, lobbyists and stakeholders in the US whose essential interest is to prevent that the United States and Venezuelan restore their political and diplomatic relations on the basis of mutual recognition and respect.”

He said the allegations had been “crafted by bureaucrats and anti-Venezuelan stakeholders, which sets a dangerous precedent in the relation between sovereign nations.

“ These stakeholders not only lack any evidence to demonstrate the extremely serious accusations against me, but they also have built a false-positive case in order to criminalise — through me — the government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.”

Mr Aissami pointed to his record in tackling drug trafficking as interior minister from 2008 to 2012, when Venezuela extradited 21 drug barons to the US and 36 to neighbouring Colombia.

“How many chiefs of criminal drug organisations have been captured by the US in its territory? How many banks and tax havens have been closed down by the US for supporting this gigantic illegal business and crime against humanity?” he wrote.

And he took aim at Washington’s own failure to control the drug trade, saying: “The ‘war on drugs’ has failed all over the planet and especially in the US territory.

“The United States owes the world and its own people a reflection on the resounding failure of its fight against drugs.”

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro appointed Mr Aissami as head of the anti-terrorism task force in a January cabinet reshuffle.

Since then authorities have uncovered violent coup plots by the far-right Popular Will party.

Last week, US President Donald Trump called for the release of jailed VP leader Leopoldo Lopez after meeting his wife Lilian Tintori in Washington.