The document indicates that Maduro headed the drug trafficking organization Cartel de los Soles
New York.- The Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife, Cilia Flores, will appear this Monday for the first time before a federal court in New York, where they face various charges of drug trafficking and corruption.
Both were captured on Saturday morning in Caracas by US forces in an unprecedented lightning operation and then transferred to New York, where they remain incarcerated at the
Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) of Brooklyn, a high-security federal prison.
Maduro is accused in the United States of four federal charges: conspiracy of
narcoterrorism,
conspiracy to import cocaine,
possession of machine guns and destructive devices, and
conspiracy to possess those same artifacts in support of criminal activities, as well as collaborating with criminal organizations classified as terrorists by Washington.
Cilia Flores, for her part, faces charges linked to alleged logistical and financial support operations to the same criminal structure, according to court documents cited by US media.
Both will be brought before federal judge Alvin K. Hellerstein, the one in charge of the case, in Manhattan at 12:00 local time (17:00 GMT).
In similar cases, the accused are usually initially presented before a judge for the formal reading of the charges, the verification of their identity, and the definition of preliminary aspects such as preventive detention or the appointment of lawyers.
Maduro, accused of leading a drug trafficking network
Maduro had already been indicted in Manhattan in March 2020, in a case based on an investigation by the DEA anti-drug agency in which charges related to narcoterrorism, conspiracy to import cocaine and crimes with weapons and destructive devices already appeared.
The same Saturday that Maduro and his wife were arrested, the court made public an accusation presented by the Prosecutor's Office that expands on the one from 2020 and again points to him as the leader of a drug trafficking and narcoterrorism network that, for more than two decades, would have used the Venezuelan State to introduce large quantities of cocaine into the United States.
The accusation, known as "substitute imputation", charges Cilia Flores and one of the couple's children for the first time.
In total, there are six people charged: in addition to Maduro and Flores, it includes Nicolás Ernesto Maduro Guerra, the president's son and his wife; Diosdado Cabello Rondón, Minister of the Interior and a key figure in Chavismo; Ramón Rodríguez Chacín, former Minister of the Interior and Héctor Rusthenford Guerrero Flores, leader of the criminal gang Tren de Aragua.
The document indicates that
Maduro headed the drug trafficking organization Cartel de los Soles, a name that refers to the high-ranking Venezuelan military officers. Under his leadership, the document claims, the organization not only sought to enrich itself and consolidate its political power, but also to "flood" the United States with cocaine and "use drugs as a weapon" against that country.
According to estimates cited in the indictment, the State Department calculated that by 2020, between 200 and 250 tons of cocaine transited Venezuelan territory each year en route to the United States.
Prosecutors describe alliances with the FARC, the ELN, the Sinaloa cartel, the Zetas, and the Tren de Aragua criminal gang, as well as the use of diplomatic passports, airports controlled by authorities, and maritime routes protected by state forces to move drugs.
Spanish
