# The ICC Prosecutor opens the Venezuela I investigation and signs a Caracas memorandum Date: 2021 ## The fact On 3 November 2021 ICC Prosecutor Karim A.A. Khan announced that the Venezuela I preliminary examination had closed with a decision to investigate alleged crimes since at least April 2017, and signed a memorandum of understanding in Caracas. Venezuela later sought deferral; Pre-Trial Chamber I authorised resumption on 27 June 2023. An investigation is not a conviction. He did not write the Pre-Trial decision. ## Context 2017 protest findings sat as parent. Neighbouring OHCHR files are neighbours. He did not sit as the Prosecutor. 2017 protests are a parent. 2023 Pre-Trial resumption is a child. 2024 repression is a later neighbour. The President of Venezuela heads the national executive, commands FANB as commander-in-chief, appoints the cabinet, and can request enabling laws. He does not write an OFAC designation, an ICC Pre-Trial Chamber decision, or a Colombian migration statute. A CNE announcement is not an opposition acta and is not a Carter Center finding. Those three statuses stay on separate rows. An ICC investigation is not a conviction. An IMF figure is labelled as an estimate where BCV stopped publishing. Sanctions after 2017 and 2019 are an external causal factor; they do not erase the pre-2017 PDVSA-and-policy collapse. ## Evidence and sources International Criminal Court carries the official instrument or communique. Reuters records the same dated act independently. ## Significance The path is justice: a completed ICC investigation opening, remaining complementarity fights and the 2023 resumption as children, not a unique guilt finding. ## What is established and what is not Established: 3 November 2021 decision to investigate Venezuela I, independently reported. Later 27 June 2023 Pre-Trial resumption is a child. Not established: a completed conviction, or that every 2017 death was thereby adjudicated that Wednesday. What would change the picture: a contradictory original with a different date or name, a later repeal, a court that vacated the instrument, or a measured series that can be argued, with lag and alternatives, as a consequence of this instrument rather than of later institutions. The date is the date of this instrument, not a licence to back-date every later harm or benefit. Referring states had sent the situation. He hosted the MoU. Pre-Trial judges later wrote a resumption decision he did not author.. A later repeal, court stay, or successor order would be a different Fact with a different date. That pair identifies The ICC Prosecutor opens the Venezuela I investigation and signs a Caracas memorandum, not a later speech about The ICC Prosecutor opens the Venezuela I investigation and signs a Caracas memorandum. Co-authors and later implementers named in Context remain on the file. The ICC Prosecutor opens the Venezuela I investigation and signs a Caracas memorandum on 2021-11-03 is not a licence to treat every later International Criminal Court communique as this same act. If a later repeal, stay, or successor instrument exists, it needs its own date and its own row. This dossier refuses to average The ICC Prosecutor opens the Venezuela I investigation and signs a Caracas memorandum into a personality. The contribution described on this Person row is limited to The Prosecutor opened the docket. Referring states had sent the situation. He hosted the MoU. Pre-Trial judges later wrote a resumption decision he did not author. That limit is the alternative to treating office-holding as authorship of every later series. ## People - Nicolás Maduro: https://factrail.ai/people/nicolas-maduro ## Drivers - Judicial independence erosion (court capture): https://factrail.ai/drivers/justice-judicial-independence-erosion - Humanitarian Access: https://factrail.ai/drivers/humanitarian-access ## Sources - https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/icc-prosecutor-opens-venezuela-probe-signs-cooperation-deal-with-maduro-2021-11-05/ - https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/icc-prosecutor-mr-karim-aa-khan-qc-opens-investigation-situation-venezuela-and-concludes ## Methodology https://factrail.ai/methodology Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/ve-icc-2021