What are the charges against Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro?
Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, face criminal charges in the United States following President Trump’s announcement early Saturday that the U.S. attacked Caracas and took them into custody.
A new indictment unsealed in federal court in New York charges Maduro with narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine-importation conspiracy and weapons charges. Flores and other senior Venezuelan officials, including Maduro’s son, are also facing charges.
Attorney General Pam Bondi, in a post on X, wrote that Maduro and his wife “will soon face the full wrath of American justice on American soil in American courts.”
According to the indictment, for more than 25 years Venezuela’s leaders “have abused their positions of public trust and corrupted once-legitimate institutions to import tons of cocaine into the United States.”
It alleges that starting as early as 1999, Maduro and his co-defendants have partnered with international drug trafficking organizations — including Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel and the Zetas, Colombian narco-terrorist groups and the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua — to ship illicit drugs into the U.S.
Venezuela’s political and military elite enriched themselves while providing protection and logistical support to the drug traffickers, according to the indictment.
It also details specific actions that Maduro allegedly took as part of the conspiracy. It says, for example, that between 2006 and 2008 when he served as foreign minister that Maduro sold Venezuelan diplomatic passports to known drug traffickers “in order to assist traffickers seeking to move drug proceeds form Mexico to Venezuela under diplomatic cover.”
He also allegedly facilitated the flights of private planes under diplomatic cover to bring drug proceeds back from Mexico to Venezuela.
Prosecutors allege that Maduro and Flores worked together for years to traffic cocaine that had previously been seized by Venezuelan law enforcement. They say the Maduros had their own state-sponsored gangs to protect their operation, and that they ordered “kidnappings, beating and murders against those who owed them drug money or otherwise undermined their drug trafficking operation.”
The new indictment adds to charges against Maduro and other Venezuelan officials that were announced in March 2020 during the first Trump administration.
Maduro denied those initial charges and called for dialogue with the U.S., before being captured.
The current Trump administration has ramped up the pressure on Maduro over the past year. The U.S. raised the bounty for Maduro’s arrest to $50 million, and designated the Cartel de los Soles as a foreign terrorist organization.
Separately, the International Criminal Court has been investigating the Venezuelan government for alleged torture, sexual violence and arbitrary detentions.
This is a developing story, which may be updated.
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