How drug trafficking holds Venezuela’s regime together

Following the elections in Venezuela on July 28, President Maduro has been completely delegitimized both domestically and internationally. While his government announced a sweeping victory with 51 percent of the vote on election night without publishing any partial results from the polling stations to date, the voting machine checklists collected by the opposition paint a different picture. They point to a landslide victory for the opposition candidate Edmundo González, who has since fled to Spain.

Despite Maduro’s low popularity, regime change is unlikely as long as the dictator has the full support of the security forces. However, the involvement of leading military and political figures in drug trafficking and other criminal activities makes it unlikely that they will voluntarily step down from power.

Leading representatives of the regime in the USA indicted

In March 2020, American judicial authorities indicted fifteen senior officials of the regime for drug trafficking and other criminal activities. Among the accused is Nicolás Maduro himself, for whose arrest the American Department of Justice has offered a reward of $15 million. Also on the list are the regime’s number two, army officer and current Minister of the Interior and Justice Diosdado Cabello, and Defense Minister and Army Chief Vladimir Padrino.

Maduro and Cabello are accused of participating in a conspiracy to traffic drugs and commit terrorism, as well as a plot to import cocaine into the USA. Padrino, who is responsible for approving overflights, is accused of having waved through planes with drugs on board in return for bribes. The US Department of Justice describes the fifteen defendants as the heads of the so-called Sun Cartel. This is named after the rank insignia of the Venezuelan generals. Depending on their rank, they are awarded one to four suns.

Another person from the inner circle of power, Maduro’s wife, former parliamentary speaker Cilia Flores, has previously been targeted by American investigators. Two of her nephews, one of whom she raised after his mother died, were arrested in Haiti in 2015 while trying to smuggle 800 kilograms of cocaine to New York. After being extradited to the United States, they were sentenced to eighteen years in prison. In October 2022, they were released as part of a prisoner exchange with Venezuela. During the trial, documents indicated that part of the hoped-for proceeds would go to Flores’ election campaign.

Maduro claims his innocence and stresses that the American accusations are not very credible because they are only being used as a weapon in the political conflict between Washington and Caracas. But the involvement of the Venezuelan government in drug trafficking has also been investigated by non-governmental bodies, such as a consortium of 41 media outlets from around the world that has investigated the so-called “Narco Files”. These are a large number of leaked documents that come from the Colombian public prosecutor’s office.

The American-Colombian NGO Insight Crime has also been collecting data on drug trafficking by Venezuela’s leadership for years. The investigations are based on information from the American Department of Justice, the DEA, leaked data such as the “Narco Files” and documents from the FARC commander Raúl Reyes, who was killed in 2008, as well as statements from former Venezuelan criminals and other insiders.

Drug trafficking together with the Colombian guerrillas

Even before President Hugo Chávez took office in 1999, individual cases of collaboration between high-ranking officers of the National Guard and the drug mafia were known. This collaboration expanded significantly after the turn of the millennium, however, when Colombia under President Uribe launched an offensive against the FARC and ELN guerrillas and pushed them back into the border area with Venezuela. The guerrillas are an important player in the drug trade. In the first few years, the collaboration was mainly limited to members of the National Guard clearing the drug transport routes through Venezuela for the guerrillas in return for bribes.

Over time, however, cells within the security forces themselves began to buy drugs, transport them throughout Venezuela and resell them. This development was encouraged by President Chávez’s decision in 2005 to stop working with the DEA and to extend drug control to the entire army by law. This gave the entire military the opportunity to cooperate with the drug trade in return for bribes.

According to Insight Crime’s research, the Sun Cartel is not a centrally managed cartel in the traditional sense, but rather a series of sometimes even competing networks of state and non-state actors. These are under the protection of government officials, who sometimes coordinate the drug trade themselves.

Chávez and his successor Maduro have thus succeeded in binding the military to themselves. Drug trafficking offers the military additional benefits and strengthens loyalty within the troops. In this spirit, officers who were targeted by the Americans were promoted by Maduro. Observers assume that drug trafficking has now also become an important source of income for the government.

Trials in the USA against high-ranking Venezuelan officers

Last April, the first of the fifteen leaders of the Sun Cartel indicted by the United States in 2020 was sentenced to 21 years and 6 months in prison in New York. Three-star general Clíver Alcalá had fallen out with Maduro and surrendered to the American authorities in Colombia in 2020. The American judiciary accused him of protecting the FARC guerrillas in their drug trafficking and supplying them with weapons. Alcalá cooperated with the American authorities and therefore received a reduced sentence.

Another trial against a member of the Sun Cartel is already pending in the USA. General Hugo Carvajal, former head of Venezuelan military intelligence and politician, was arrested in Spain and extradited to the USA in July 2023.

The verdict against Alcalá and the trial against Carvajal send a clear message to Venezuela’s political and military leaders involved in drug trafficking: losing power could result in decades in prison, and before the regime could be overthrown, they would likely have to negotiate with the United States to have the charges against them dropped if they leave power.