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Former Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro and his wife used diplomatic planes to move cocaine money from Mexico to Venezuela, and maintained long-standing ties with Mexican cartels, according to the Department of Justice’s (DoJ) indictment against the couple.
US Attorney General Pam Bondi released the indictment on Saturday morning, hours after US special forces arrested the dictator in a daring nighttime raid on his home in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas.
The indictment focuses on Maduro, his wife, his chief military ally Diosdado Cabello, and Hector Ruthenford Guerrero Flores, a top leader with the Tren De Aragua terrorist organization.
Prosecutors allege the four maintained a close business relationship with Colombian terrorist organizations, and Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel and Los Zetas.
Maduro is alleged to have sold diplomatic passports to drug traffickers to allow them to move drug money from Mexico into Venezuela using diplomatic cover. Maduro also allowed private airplanes diplomatic immunity, so drug traffickers could fly between Mexico and Venezuela without attracting the attention of law enforcement.
Maduro’s wife is also alleged to have received massive bribes of up to $100,000 per drug shipment.
In 2006, Nicolas Maduro and his family coordinated the shipment of 5.5 tons of cocaine in a jet that flew from Venezuela to Playa Del Carmen in Mexico, the indictment revealed. The drugs had previously been seized by Venezuelan law enforcement and then loaded into the plane by the Venezuelan military.
The indictment details how tons of drugs—sometimes as much as 20 tons at a time—were moved through Venezuela by Colombian and Mexican cartels, with the protection of the Venezuelan military. Among the main players in this operation was the former leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman.
On Saturday night, hours after his arrest, Maduro was seen making a “perp walk” at DEA headquarters in New York.
Maduro wore black sweats and a black hat as he clutched a water bottle while being escorted through the Chelsea facility before being taken to the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn.
After their capture, the couple were taken on board the USS Iwo Jima, in the Caribbean, and from there travelled to the US to face federal narco-terrorism charges and other offenses in the Southern District of New York.
When they arrived at the DEA building in Brooklyn, they were greeted by hundreds of revelers celebrating their arrest.
“It’s such a joy to see the dictator fall, but the regime hasn’t fallen yet,” Venezuelan national Ronny Chirinos, who came to New York three years ago due to Maduro’s regime, told The New York Post.
“I want everything to fall. That there is no one left.”
Maduro and his wife are expected to appear in court as soon as Monday.
