Attorney General Pam Bondi on Saturday morning posted the unsealed grand jury indictment against Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, his wife and son, and several top Venezuelan officials on narco-terrorism conspiracy and weapons charges. Maduro was taken into custody by U.S. forces in an overnight raid.
Bondi said Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, have been indicted in the Southern District of New York on charges including “narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy, possession of machineguns and destructive devices, and conspiracy to possess machineguns and destructive devices against the United States.”
“They will soon face the full wrath of American justice on American soil in American courts,” she promised, thanking President Donald Trump and “our brave military” for having the courage to hold Maduro accountable.
The indictment, which refers to the Venezuelan dictator by his full name of Nicolás Maduro Moros, charged him and his co-conspirators with using “his illegally obtained authority, and the institutions he corroded, to transport thousands of tons of cocaine to the United States.”
“Since his early days in Venezuelan government, Maduro has tarnished every public office he has held,” the grand jury said, outlining a criminal career that ran from moving “loads of cocaine under the protection of Venezuelan law enforcement” when he was a member of the Venezuelan legislature, to profiting from “cocaine-fueled corruption” as president.
Among the co-conspirators allegedly enriched by Maduro’s drug trafficking were Venezuelan Minister of the Interior, Justice, and Peace Diosdado Cabello Rondón, former Minister of the Interior and Justice Ramon Rodriguez Chacin, Maduro’s wife Cilia Adela Flores de Maduro, and his son Nicolás Ernesto Maduro Guerra, who holds a seat in the National Assembly and is known as “The Prince.”
The indictment said Maduro and his co-conspirators worked with numerous narco-terrorist gangs, including the FARC and ELN insurgents of Colombia, the Sinaloa and Los Zetas cartels of Mexico, and Venezuela’s infamous Tren de Aragua gang. The indictment charged Maduro and his co-conspirators with leading the Cartel de Los Soles (“Cartel of the Suns”), a Venezuelan operation that is named after the sun insignia that appears on the uniforms of high-ranking Venezuelan military officers.
The tentacles of Maduro’s corruption snaked through Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico before reaching across the borders of the United States.
“Cocaine traffickers operating in those countries paid a portion of their own profits to politicians who protected and aided them,” the indictment noted. “In turn, these politicians used the cocaine-fueled payments to maintain and augment their political power.”
The dangerous and seditious gangs Maduro worked with in countries like Colombia also benefited from his malign trade, raking in vast profits to fuel their destabilizing activities. Meanwhile, Americans were poisoned by “thousands of tons of cocaine” trafficked into the United States. The Venezuelan government resources Maduro placed at the disposal of his cartel allies were invaluable in protecting the cocaine supply chain.
The indictment charged Maduro’s wife and son with actively participating in the narco-terrorist conspiracy. For example, Cilia Flores was allegedly present at a meeting in 2007 where heavy bribes were paid by a “large-scale drug trafficker” to set up a meeting with Venezuela’s top “anti-drug officer,” Nestor Reverol Torres. Torres ended up on the cartel payroll, was eventually charged with narcotics offenses in the Eastern District of New York, and remains a fugitive to this day.
The indictment also charged Cilia Flores with working together with Nicolás Maduro to traffic huge amounts of cocaine that had been seized by Venezuelan law enforcement. Maduro and his wife managed a private paramilitary force of gangsters to protect their drug shipments – and to violently collect on past-due invoices from their erstwhile business partners.
Maduro’s son, meanwhile, was charged with using his private plane to transport loads of drugs when he returned from island vacations. He allegedly later coordinated cocaine shipments from Venezuela to Miami – and sent parcels of lower-quality cocaine to New York, after Miami buyers turned up their powdered noses at the cheaper product.
“The Prince” also allegedly worked as Maduro’s emissary to FARC in Colombia, paying the insurgents off with weapons for their assistance with moving Venezuelan cocaine. The weapons Maduro provided to the dangerous Colombian rebels included grenades and grenade launchers.
The indictment said that in addition to supplying narco-terrorist gangs with weapons, Maduro and his co-conspirators “knowingly used and carried firearms” during their criminal activities, including “machine guns that were capable of automatically shooting more than one shot” and other “destructive devices,” in violation of U.S. codes.
The indictment ordered Maduro and the other defendants to forfeit “any and all property constituting, or derived from,” their alleged criminal activities, including their monetary proceeds and their illegal weapons and ammunition.