The drugs case against Maduro
Ousted Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro faces sweeping charges of drug trafficking, but analysts say US prosecutors will need to focus tightly on proving he moved weapons, drugs and laundered money in order to convict him.
US President Donald Trump has painted Maduro, who was snatched by US forces in a pre-dawn raid on his compound at a military base in Caracas on Saturday, as head of the so-called “Cartel of the Suns”. In court in New York on Monday, he pleaded not guilty to four charges of narco-terrorism, conspiracy to import cocaine and possession of weapons.
The indictment contains allegations that Maduro doled out diplomatic passports to drug traffickers, met guerrillas at the Miraflores presidential palace and discussed drug trafficking routes with top officials after a big bust in Paris of cocaine sent on a commercial plane from Venezuela.
“We can talk about the legality of his arrest, but the charges seem pretty solid,” said Adam Isacson at the Washington Office on Latin America, a think-tank. “Nothing really strains credibility for me.”
One former official from the US Drug Enforcement Administration said such drug conspiracy cases can be “rather easy to gain convictions on”.
But the Trump administration’s case will still hinge on demonstrating to the court that Venezuela and Maduro posed a major drug-trafficking threat to the US — allegations Maduro denies.
Brian Naranjo, a former senior US diplomat who was expelled from Venezuela by Maduro’s regime, said prosecutors might have to eschew Trump’s “soaring rhetoric of him being a drug kingpin” and zero in on proving allegations that Maduro “actually had a hand in moving drugs, moving weapons or laundering money”.
The main sources of illegal drugs entering the US are Mexico for the synthetic opioid fentanyl and Colombia for cocaine. While being a significant transit country for Colombian cocaine, Venezuela is not known to produce or ship fentanyl.
In the indictment, the US alleges that in and around 2020 an estimate of “between 200 and 250 tons of cocaine were trafficked through Venezuela annually”. By comparison Colombia’s total cocaine production was estimated at 2,660 tonnes in 2023, according to the UN’s Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
Former US officials say that what sets Venezuela apart is the degree of state control and involvement in the drugs trade.
US authorities launched legal action against top members of the Venezuelan military in 2011. A former head of Caracas’s military intelligence, Hugo “El Pollo” Carvajal, was indicted in New York for conspiring with Colombian Marxist guerrillas to ship 5.6 tonnes of cocaine from Venezuela to Mexico for onward distribution to the US. Carvajal later pleaded guilty and is awaiting sentencing.
In Monday’s indictment — an update to charges brought in 2020 — the US alleged that Maduro had “abused” his public roles for over 25 years and “partnered with his co-conspirators to use his illegally obtained authority . . . to transport thousands of tons of cocaine to the United States”.
The Trump administration says Maduro is the leader of the so-called “Cartel de los Soles” or Cartel of the Suns, which Washington in November designated a foreign terrorist organisation responsible for “violence throughout our hemisphere” and trafficking drugs to the US and Europe.
The name is believed to have been coined by journalists in the early 2000s to reflect the small yellow suns that senior Venezuelan military officers wear to denote rank. It is widely considered more a state-embedded drug trafficking operation, with a focus on the military, rather than a traditionally structured cartel.
“The real, fundamental problem that US prosecutors are going to face here is: Does the Cartel de los Soles actually exist?” said Naranjo.
Most experts nevertheless agree that Maduro’s regime has benefited from producing and smuggling cocaine.
The indictment contained specific allegations — such as that between 2006 and 2008, while serving as foreign minister, Maduro sold Venezuelan diplomatic passports to people he knew were drug traffickers to help them shift drug proceeds to Venezuela from Mexico under diplomatic cover.
“When the drug traffickers needed to move drug proceeds from Mexico back to Venezuela . . . [Maduro] called the Venezuelan embassy in Mexico to advise that a diplomatic mission would be arriving by private plane,” the indictment said.
The US also alleges that Maduro convened a high-level meeting to discuss drug-trafficking routes months after assuming the presidency in 2013, following the seizure of 1.3 tons of cocaine at Paris’ Charles de Gaulle airport from a commercial flight.
The indictment said Maduro had, since about 1999, “partnered with narco-terrorists” from Colombia’s Farc and ELN guerrilla groups as well as Mexico’s Sinaloa and Los Zetas cartels and the Tren de Aragua, a gang which Trump has also designated a foreign terrorist organisation. Venezuela had become “a safe haven for drug traffickers willing to pay for protection”, it adds.
Maduro also allegedly convened top-level meetings to discuss drug transit routes and used armed military escorts to traffic cocaine that had been seized by Venezuelan law enforcement.
Relatives of the former leader are cited as telling the US Drug Enforcement Administration about alleged multi-hundred kilo cocaine shipments from Maduro’s presidential hangar at Maiquetía airport in Caracas, clandestine airstrips being used, and drug transshipments being made via Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico.
“There are a lot of allegations in there [the indictment],” said Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond, Virginia. “But whether they can be proved and who the witnesses would be — all that is really not very clear.”
Trump in August doubled the reward for information leading to Maduro’s arrest and conviction to $50mn. In January last year, the administration of former president Joe Biden increased an initial $15mn bounty set in Trump’s first term to $25mn, suggesting cross-party consensus that Maduro was involved in drug trafficking.
The case is being heard by 92-year-old senior judge Alvin Hellerstein, who was appointed by former president Bill Clinton. Maduro told the court he had been kidnapped.
“I am not guilty,” he said. “I am a decent man.”
