A recently unsealed indictment from a U.S. federal court in New York claims that Venezuela’s socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro is directly involved in the drug trafficking operations of the Cartel of the Suns, the Miami Herald reported on Wednesday.
The court documents reportedly reviewed by the Herald alleged that Maduro, despite not having had a leading role in the initial meetings to formalize the socialist regime’s drug trafficking operations through the cartel, has come to ultimately lead the organization — long accused of attempting to “flood” the United States with cocaine to harm its people.
The Cartel of the Suns is an intercontinental cocaine trafficking operation run by high-ranking members of the Venezuelan military and by some leading figures of the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV). The criminal organization takes its name from the sun-like insignias that are worn by top Venezuelan military officials.
Unlike traditional, hierarchical drug cartels, the Venezuelan Cartel of the Suns is believed to operate through a diffuse “network of networks” ingrained deep within the different branches of Venezuela’s Bolivarian Armed Forces — a military institution which has repeatedly espoused its “profoundly Chavista” and anti-United States ideological precepts and long ago pledged its loyalty to the PSUV.
Experts have accused the socialist drug cartel of engaging in “asymmetric warfare” against the United States by trafficking cocaine into United States. The organization is largely believed to have forged alliances with the Shiite jihadist organization Hezbollah and other drug trafficking organizations such as the Mexican Sinaloa Cartel, the Marxist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), and the National Liberation Army (ELN) terrorist organization, also Colombian.
American authorities have identified Nicolás Maduro, ruling socialist party strongman; long-suspected drug lord Diosdado Cabello; Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López; and the now-defrocked former Oil Minister and Hezbollah middleman Tareck El Aissami as some of the Cartel’s most prominent leading figures. American authorities have been offering bounties for any information that can lead to the arrests and/or convictions of Maduro, Cabello, and El Aissami since 2020.
The Miami Herald explained in its report that, although Maduro was charged in 2020 with being part of the Cartel, the “prevalent view” was that Maduro had played a minor role in the cartel itself, with Cabello and El Aissami leading the organization.
The alleged unsealed indictment allegedly shows that Maduro’s name does not often appear in the initial meetings late dictator Hugo Chávez held with his top lieutenants while forging his alliance with the FARC to ship cocaine to the United States.
Prior to becoming Venezuela’s dictator in 2013, Maduro served as Chávez’s foreign minister between 2006 and 2012 and as president of the National Assembly in 2005 and 2006. Maduro briefly served as Chávez’s vice president between October 2012 and March 5, 2013, the date the ruling socialists claim Chávez died of a yet-undisclosed form of cancer.
The court documents claim that Maduro’s influence in the Venezuelan drug cartel grew after he succeeded Chávez as the nation’s dictator and as “the interest of the drug trafficking operations began to intertwine with the matters of state.”
“The U.S State Department placed the annual volume of the drug transiting through Venezuela at more than 250 tons,” the report reads. “Experts currently believe the current volume going out of Venezuela doubles that amount.”
The unsealed indictment reportedly stated that the Cartel of the Suns not only sought to enrich its members and enhance their power, but also that the drug trafficking organization sought to “flood” the United States with cocaine and “inflict the drug’s harmful and addictive effects on users in this country.”
The indictment further stated that Maduro allegedly participated in negotiations to “secure multi-ton shipments of cocaine” from the FARC in exchange for the delivery of money and weapons to the terrorist organization. Maduro is also accused of coordinating with Honduran and other Central American countries for the “uninterrupted passage of drug shipments heading towards the United States.”
Maduro’s coordinations, the report stated, helped set up an “air bridge” of drugs in the region.
The indictment also allegedly claimed that Hugo Chávez asked Maduro in 2005 to help the Cartel of the Suns identify judges unwilling to provide protection to the FARC and its drug trafficking activities so they could be fired. During his tenure as foreign minister, one of Maduro’s roles allegedly was to ensure that Venezuela’s border with Colombia remained open “to allow shipments coming from the neighboring country to enter without disruptions.”
Maduro allegedly obtained $5 million from the drug trade and got involved in a money laundering operation tied to the palm oil business before the Cartel of the Suns began laundering its funds through the state-owned PDVSA oil company.
“The operation continued to grow after Maduro became president in 2013, following Chavez’s death, with his family members seeking to benefit directly from the drug trade,” the report claimed.
In 2015, a DEA sting operation in Haiti concluded with the arrest of Efraín Antonio Campo Flores and Francisco Flores de Freitas, two of Maduro’s nephews that then became commonly known as the narcosobrinos (“narco-nephews”). The pair was caught by DEA officials as they were attempting to transport 800 kilograms of FARC-produced cocaine, law enforcement officials said.
The socialist dictator’s drug-trafficking nephews, who had been sentenced to 18 years in prison in December 2017, were released by the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden in October 2022 as part of a prisoner swap with the Maduro regime that saw the release of seven unjustly imprisoned American oil workers.
The Miami Herald stated that two of the DEA informants involved in the sting against the narcosobrinos were murdered after the arrest.
A report published by the Miami Herald in November claimed that the Cartel of the Sun is now able to move upwards of 350 metric tons of cocaine per year, valued at $6.2-$8.7 billion. The report explained that the severely cash-starved Maduro regime had become “increasingly dependent” on drug trafficking after more than 20 years of socialist mismanagement left Venezuela’s economy in shambles.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.