The accusation against Maduro identifies the Sinaloa Cartel and Los Zetas as organizations that received, transported and secured cocaine sent from Venezuela, in coordination with officials at the highest Venezuelan political and military level.
“Venezuelan officials partnered with narcoterrorist organizations, including the Sinaloa Cartel, Los Zetas and the Aragua Train, to distribute tons of cocaine to the United States,” the file states.
The document shared by the Attorney General of the United States, Pamela Bondi, also accuses Nicolás Maduro of trafficking cocaine for 25 years and of providing diplomatic protection to drug traffickers and money launderers who flew from Mexico.
Between 2006 and 2008, when he was foreign minister, Maduro allegedly provided Venezuelan diplomatic passports to drug traffickers and provided diplomatic cover to planes used by money launderers to move drug profits from Mexico to Venezuela.
Nicolás Maduro and the “Cartel of the Suns”
At dawn on Saturday, January 3, in a surgical operation, US soldiers entered Venezuelan territory, penetrated the former president’s residence and took him and his wife Cilia Flores out of the country; Today both appeared for the first time before a New York Court, where they pleaded not guilty.
(Photo: Jane Rosenberg/AFP)
They face accusations of making since 1999 narcoterrorism conspiracy activitiesconspiracy to introduce cocaine into the United States and other weapons-related crimes.
According to the indictment document published by the United States Department of Justice, on at least one occasion a Colombian criminal group, two Venezuelan cartels and one Mexican cartel converged to traffic drugs into US territory.
In 2011, the Sinaloa Cartel would have transported cocaineheaded by Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a far-left guerrilla that was born in 1964 and in the 80’s dabbled in criminal activities, and the Tren de Aragua, considered the most violent criminal organization in Venezuela; In that action the “Cartel of the Suns”, made up of Venezuelan officials, would have provided protection.
The United States has called a group led by former President Maduro, officials of his government and, above all, the military of that country, the “Cartel of the Suns.”
The accusations in 2011, the Sinaloa Cartel financed cocaine laboratories in Colombia, whose transport was protected by the FARC to Venezuela, where it received protection on the route to the landing strip from Hugo Armando Carvajal Barrios, former major general of the Bolivarian Army of Venezuela and former deputy of the National Assembly, close to Maduro and Diosdado Cabello Rondón, minister of the interior of that country.
A month ago, “El Pollo” Carvajal, former head of intelligence and counterintelligence of the Venezuelan regime, detained in the United States and about to be sentenced by a court in that country for the crime of drug trafficking, wrote to President Donald Trump to warn of the alleged criminal risk of the Maduro regime.
In another section, the US justice system points to Ramón Emilio Rodríguez Chacín, former Minister of the Interior and Justice of Nicolás Maduro’s predecessor in the Venezuelan government, Hugo Chávez, among other former military personnel and former officials, as part of the “Cartel of the Suns” that established a relationship with Mexican and Venezuelan drug traffickers for criminal work.
Among them the Sinaloa Cartel and the Zetas, which controlled the routes in Central America and the methods to cross cocaine from Mexico to the United States, as well as the Tren de Aragua (TdA) “which controls a criminal network capable of facilitating the transportation of cocaine within and on the Venezuelan coast.”
The same accusation against Maduro, Flores de Maduro, Nicolás Maduro Guerra “Nicolasito” or “El Príncipe” (son of the former president); Diosdado Cabello, Rodríguez Chacín and Carvajal Barrios, is directed against Héctor Rusthenford Guerrero “Niño Guerrero”, leader of the Aragua Train, a fugitive from justice.
All of them are accused of conspiring to bring drugs into the United States or to bring them within 12 miles of the American coast and to traffic weapons.
