From the alleged direction of international drug trafficking to the direct confrontation with American justice. The forced exit from Venezuela opens a new phase for Nicolás Maduro, called to respond before a federal court to charges of narco-terrorism, corruption and collusion with the Colombian guerrillas.
For years Nicolás Maduro he embodied the image of unassailable power in Venezuela, despite a multi-million dollar reward set by the United States and a federal indictment made public in 2020 that named him as the protagonist of a system of narcoterrorism. That wall of apparent impunity cracked in the early hours of Saturday, when a military operation led to the forced exit of the Venezuelan president and his wife from the country. Now Maduro will have to appear in federal court in New York to answer for international drug trafficking and criminal association with terrorist purposes. “They will soon face the wrath of American justice on American soil, in front of American judges,” the attorney general declared Pam Bondireferring to Maduro and to his wife Cilia Flores. A message that marks a change of phase in the US judicial strategy towards the political summit in Caracas.
According to the prosecution, Maduro it would have been the summit of the so-called Los Soles Cartelan informal and branched structure composed of generals and high officials of the Venezuelan state. For over twenty years, this network allegedly collected huge sums in the form of bribes from Colombian guerrilla leaders, allowing enormous quantities of cocaine to pass through Venezuelan territory. The drugs, the magistrates explain, were then directed towards the markets United States and dell‘Europe. The expression Los Soles Cartelborn in the local journalistic language, recalls the golden suns – equivalent to the stars of US generals – which appear on the insignia of Venezuelan officers.
The investigations place not only Maduro, but also his predecessor Hugo Chávez and other leading exponents of the state apparatus at the center of this system. According to investigators, the political power collaborated with the Colombian guerrillas to ensure the transit of cocaine. Washington had classified the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia as a terrorist organization between 1997 and 2021, before their formal dissolution. The United States they argue that the Venezuela has long played a key function as a logistical corridor for Colombian narcotics, destined to then reach the country by sea or air. North Americai Caribbean and the European continent. In the reconstruction of the prosecution, both during the era Chávez both below Maduro, Caracas would have «privileged the use of cocaine as an instrument of pressure against theAmerica”. A thesis forcefully rejected by the Venezuelan leader, who in a letter sent to Donald Trump last September he spoke of “fake news constructed to legitimize a military escalation with devastating consequences for the entire continent”, calling instead for the path of dialogue.
There is, however, no shortage of critical voices regarding the prosecution’s evidentiary system. Some Venezuelan analysts believe that demonstrating in the courtroom the direct involvement of Maduro it will be complex. “The real difficulty will be to prove the very existence of the Los Soles Cartel and demonstrate that Maduro was its commander,” he observed to Wall Street Journal Brian Naranjoa former senior US diplomatic official with experience in Caracas.
According to experts, much of the cocaine bound for the United States originates from the Pacific coast of Pigeonsto and fromEcuador. Unlike the large Mexican cartelslike that of Jalisco, the Venezuelan structure would not have a rigid hierarchy, but would function as a widespread network of military officers who facilitate trafficking in exchange for compensation along transit routes. Phil Gunsonan analyst at the International Crisis Group, describes the Los Soles Cartel as “a useful label for a disorganized and often conflictual set of generals and officials who thrive in a system of chronic corruption.”
The parallel that many observers evoke is the one with the Panamanian general Manuel Noriega. He, once an ally of Washington, also ended up being accused of collusion with drug traffickers and was arrested after the US invasion of Panama in 1989. Convicted of drug trafficking, he spent 17 years in prison before returning to his country, where he died in 2017. A precedent that weighs heavily in the background of the Maduro affair. American magistrates trace the structural links between Caracas and drug trafficking back to the years of his presidency Chávezwhen – according to the accusation – the generals were ordered to supply weapons to the Colombian guerrillas, which then merged into a peace process in 2016. The shadows of the trafficking also touched the presidential family: in 2015 two nephews of Cilia Flores were arrested in an undercover operation after offering to deliver large shipments of cocaine to alleged middlemen, who turned out to be DEA agents. The two declared themselves “at war” with the United States and boasted contacts with senior guerrilla commanders. Convicted in New York in 2016, they were freed in 2022 as part of a prisoner exchange.
Other former Venezuelan military leaders are already detained in the United States and could testify against it Maduro. These include the former head of military intelligence Hugo Carvajal and the general Clíver Alcaláboth guilty of having contributed to the trafficking of tons of cocaine and the supply of weapons to the guerrillas. Washington has also set millionaire rewards on other key exponents of Venezuelan power, who deny any wrongdoing and reject the very existence of the Soles Cartel, calling it “an ideological construction”. After Saturday’s attacks, the two spread defiant messages while remaining in the country, while the international judicial front around the collaborators of Maduro it gets tighter and tighter.
