The Minister of the Interior, Justice and Peace, Diosdado Cabello, reported three anti-drug procedures carried out in Zulia and Anzoátegui with the seizure of 14,405 panels of drugs: 81 of cocaine and 14,324 of marijuana. All this shipment yielded a total of 6,849.75 kilos of marijuana (14,324 panelas) and 91.75 of cocaine (81 panelas), Minister Cabello specified during a press conference held yesterday from his office.
The main procedure explained yesterday by Cabello was carried out on January 5 in the Independencia municipality, Anzoátegui state, border with Ciudad Bolívar (Bolívar). The capital of the aforementioned municipality of Anzoatiguense was called Soledad for a time and was now given the name Ciudad Orinoco. Hence, the police-military procedure was baptized as Operation Soledad, where the agents seized 238 bags containing 14,280 panels of drugs that they were transporting through the waters of the Orinoco River as it passed through Ciudad Bolívar and Ciudad Orinoco in two boats, one of which capsized.
Of that number of panels, there were 14,199 marijuana wrappers that yielded a total of 6,758 kilos and 66 grams. And in addition, the shipment included 81 panels of cocaine that weighed 91 kilos and 75 grams. In total, 6,850 kilos with 41 grams of drugs were seized, the minister detailed.
The other two procedures were carried out in the Catatumbo region (Zulia), Binational Zone No. 1, one of them in the Mara parish, sector 4, path 6, Mara municipality, where 50 panels of marijuana that were transported by three people were seized.
Three other people were arrested in the Bolivarian Guajira Indigenous municipality (Zulia) from whom 75 panels of marijuana were seized. Both procedures totaled 89 kilos 45 grams of the aforementioned drug, according to the figures presented.
The minister specified that the drugs seized in Zulia belong to “the Albanian mafia that operates in Ecuador”, one of whose members is detained in Venezuela.
So far this year, a total of 7,148 kilos of drugs have been seized in different operations, reported Minister Cabello, who was accompanied at the press conference by Danny Ferrer Sandrea, head of the National Anti-Drug Superintendency; Rubén Santiago (director of the Bolivarian National Police); Douglas Rico (director of the Cicpc), Alexander Granko (deputy director of the General Directorate of Military Counterintelligence), Alexis Rodríguez (director of Sebin) and Elio Estrada Paredes (general commander of the Bolivarian National Guard), among others.
Cabello highlighted that last year security agencies destroyed a route used by Colombian drug trafficking, which included the passage of boats through Lake Maracaibo. This led to the arrest of police officials, military officials, mayors, judges and prosecutors from the Public Ministry as facilitators of that drug industry.
And the minister specified that once that narco-route was pulverized, they began intelligence work to detect and neutralize the new geographical points used by drug trafficking that involves movement along the Orinoco River as it passes through Apure, Guárico, Anzoátegui, Delta Amacuro and Bolívar.
“We are going to destroy that logistical route like we destroyed the one to Lake Maracaibo,” the Minister of the Interior promised.
“This is an instruction given by President Nicolás Maduro and the president in charge,” said Minister Cabello.
The sector vice president of Politics, Citizen Security and Peace said that the anti-drug procedures described constitute “a very hard blow to the narrative of saying that Venezuela is a country that facilitates drug trafficking.” He confirmed that “we have never taken the issue of the Suns cartel as an issue,” because it is “a false narrative from the United States Government.” The minister stressed that “the Suns cartel has never existed and is not an argument for the attack. The argument for the attack is oil.”
We asked the minister if they had captured any cartel boss in the procedures exposed. In this regard, he said that those detained in Operation Soledad “are the most representative, the logistical coordinators,” who are providing information.
We also asked the minister about the episode that occurred in the Primazol company, importers and distributors of raw materials for all basic industries, which is located in Maracaibo. That company suffered a fire in the early hours of December 24, explained the president of Primazol, who clarified through a video to Colombian President Gustavo Petro that they do not package or manufacture any type of narcotics, as he stated. On that point, the minister supported the explanation given by the founder of the company and reproached Petro’s statements, who “sometimes comes out to give statements without having evidence (…) some atrocities, so that the one who is right is the owner of the factory, he always was.”
“The country is calm”
Those who report from news portals “empty streets and closed businesses” in Venezuela have never lived here, commented Minister Diosdado Cabello in response to a question asked at the press conference about the situation in the country.
“They don’t know what January is like here in Venezuela: Venezuelans are overcome with sadness in January because the holidays are over,” he said.
The minister announced that Venezuela will little by little recover daily activity. “The country is calm, the country is calm, we spent up to four days without anyone being murdered… our people have too great a level of consciousness,” Cabello exemplified.
He said that the acting president Delcy Rodríguez held a meeting with European diplomats who perceive “normalization within the country, within a tense calm, but calm.”
