Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor- Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she was not sur­prised that the Unit­ed States’ in­dict­ment of Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro in­cludes al­le­ga­tions that Caribbean politi­cians were com­plic­it in co­caine traf­fick­ing.

The su­per­sed­ing in­dict­ment, un­sealed by a US fed­er­al grand ju­ry in the South­ern Dis­trict of New York on Sat­ur­day (Jan­u­ary 3), de­tails grand ju­ry charges against Maduro and oth­er high-rank­ing Venezue­lan of­fi­cials.

The doc­u­ment claims that Caribbean politi­cians fi­nan­cial­ly ben­e­fit­ed from drug traf­fick­ers in ex­change for pro­tec­tion from law en­force­ment.

Ac­cord­ing to the in­dict­ment, Maduro and “cor­rupt” mem­bers of his regime en­abled a sys­tem of cor­rup­tion fu­eled by drug traf­fick­ing across the re­gion. Co­caine ship­ments through Hon­duras, Guatemala, and Mex­i­co were al­leged­ly sup­port­ed by sys­temic bribery, with traf­fick­ers pay­ing off politi­cians who, in turn, used il­lic­it funds to strength­en and en­trench their pow­er.

The in­dict­ment al­so names the Caribbean as a key trans­ship­ment route, stat­ing: “So, too, were politi­cians along the ‘Caribbean route’ cor­rupt­ed by co­caine traf­fick­ers, who would pay them for pro­tec­tion from ar­rest and to al­low favoured traf­fick­ers to op­er­ate with im­puni­ty as they traf­ficked co­caine from Venezuela north to­wards the Unit­ed States.

“Thus, at every step, re­ly­ing on the pro­duc­ers in Colom­bia, nine trans­porters and dis­trib­u­tors in Venezuela, and re­cip­i­ents and re-dis­trib­u­tors on tran­ship­ment points north, the traf­fick­ers en­riched them­selves and their cor­rupt bene­fac­tors who pro­tect­ed and aid­ed them.”

When asked for her re­ac­tion, Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, “I’m not sur­prised at all. As the sto­ry con­tin­ues to un­fold, I have no doubt that many ‘re­spectable’ and ‘cel­e­brat­ed’ peo­ple across all sec­tors of so­ci­ety will be ex­posed.”

While the in­dict­ment does not specif­i­cal­ly name Trinidad and To­ba­go, it iden­ti­fies the Caribbean as a ma­jor cor­ri­dor for co­caine al­leged­ly traf­ficked by Maduro.

It al­so states that by around 2020, the US State De­part­ment es­ti­mat­ed that be­tween 200 and 250 tons of co­caine were traf­ficked through Venezuela an­nu­al­ly.

The charges ex­tend be­yond Maduro to in­clude sev­er­al key fig­ures: Venezuela’s Min­is­ter of In­te­ri­or, Jus­tice and Peace Dios­da­do Ca­bel­lo Rondón; Ramón Ro­dríguez Chacín, for­mer jus­tice min­is­ter and ex-gov­er­nor of Guári­co State; Maduro’s wife Cil­ia Adela Flo­res de Maduro; his son and Na­tion­al As­sem­bly mem­ber Nicolás Ernesto Maduro Guer­ra; and Héc­tor Rus­then­ford Guer­rero Flo­res, al­leged leader of Tren de Aragua, a transna­tion­al crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tion.

The up­dat­ed in­dict­ment ex­pands on charges first laid in 2020, adding new ev­i­dence, ad­di­tion­al de­fen­dants—in­clud­ing Maduro’s wife—and links to in­ter­na­tion­al crim­i­nal net­works.

Maduro faces four ma­jor counts, each car­ry­ing a po­ten­tial life sen­tence, in­clud­ing nar­co-ter­ror­ism con­spir­a­cy, large-scale co­caine traf­fick­ing in­to the Unit­ed States, and the pos­ses­sion and con­spir­a­cy to use ma­chine guns and de­struc­tive de­vices to sup­port drug-traf­fick­ing op­er­a­tions.

The in­dict­ment fol­lows Maduro’s cap­ture dur­ing a US mil­i­tary op­er­a­tion in Cara­cas, mark­ing a ma­jor es­ca­la­tion in the in­ter­na­tion­al pur­suit of the Venezue­lan leader and his al­leged crim­i­nal net­work.