The Biden administration secretly permitted Chevron Corp. to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to the Venezuelan government despite a license that explicitly prohibited such disbursements, according to people familiar with the matter.

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro suspended flights on March 8, after the U.S. Treasury Department announced the withdrawal of Chevron’s license to

The Venezuelan government attributed a willingness to receive the flights to the plight of Venezuelan migrants sent to notorious prisons in El Salvador with little to no due process.