Venezuela’s Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez holds a news conference in Caracas, Venezuela January 24, 2019. REUTERS/Manaure Quintero NO RESALES. NO ARCHIVES.
For over two decades, a close-knit group of Venezuelan generals and high-ranking officials has facilitated the shipment of thousands of tons of cocaine to the United States and Europe, according to U.S. and Colombian officials.
While almost all of the cocaine is produced in neighboring Colombia, Venezuela plays a significant role by allowing the drugs to pass through its territory and subsequently via boats and planes headed to Europe, the Caribbean, and the U.S., officials have said.
The country’s military permits Colombian guerrillas and cocaine gangs, who pay millions in bribes, to transport cocaine throughout Venezuela, according to authorities. The cocaine is then sent by air to Central America or by sea to the Caribbean islands and Europe.
“What Venezuela does is to provide security and logistics from the National Guard and the Army to remove the cocaine from the country,” said Alberto Romero, former intelligence and counterintelligence director of Colombia’s National Intelligence Directorate.
This Venezuelan network, known to U.S. officials as the “Cartel de los Soles,” is now under scrutiny from the Trump administration. The State Department announced it will designate the Cartel de los Soles as a foreign terrorist organization on Monday.
The name, coined by Venezuelan media years ago, reflects the notion that drug trafficking reaches into the regime and Venezuelan military. “Soles” refers to the golden insignia, akin to U.S. generals’ stars, worn on the shoulder epaulettes of Venezuelan generals’ uniforms.
At the helm of the group, according to U.S. officials, is Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, for whom the U.S. has placed a $50 million bounty. President Trump has stated he wants Maduro to step down, and the U.S. has assembled a large fleet in the Caribbean, including the world’s most advanced aircraft carrier, deploying up to 15,000 troops in the area as part of what they call “Operation Southern Lance.”
Since September, the U.S. has killed at least 82 people in strikes on 22 boats in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific, claiming the vessels were transporting drugs to the U.S., often coming from Venezuela. The U.S. has also threatened to launch attacks against the Venezuelan mainland. However, in recent days, Trump has indicated he is open to talks with Maduro instead.
The Venezuelan chavismo denies facilitating the shipment of drugs to the United States. Yet, a 2020 indictment against Maduro points to a vast conspiracy over many years in which Maduro, high-ranking Venezuelan generals, senior officials, and Colombian guerrilla leaders collaborated to traffik tons of cocaine to the U.S. and Europe.
It accuses Maduro and his associates of enriching themselves and using cocaine as a “weapon” that flooded the U.S. with the drug, causing harm to Americans.
Maduro denies the charges. “It is the worst kind of fake news launched against our country to justify an escalation toward armed conflict that will have a catastrophic impact across the continent,” he wrote in a September letter to Trump, urging dialogue to resolve the conflict.
U.S. prosecutors trace the drug trafficking connections back to the presidency of the late Hugo Chávez, who rose to power in 1999 and ordered generals to supply arms to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, which fought the Colombian state until a peace agreement in 2016. Maduro, who was then vice president, succeeded Chávez as president in 2013.
Since then, Maduro has presided over Venezuela’s economic collapse, primarily due to mismanagement and corruption, but worsened by economic sanctions imposed by the U.S. in 2019. Venezuela’s GDP has contracted by 80%, forcing eight million Venezuelans, a quarter of the population, to flee.
Maduro is accused of stealing two presidential elections. Last year, he claimed victory, but opposition leaders and electoral observers said that candidate Edmundo González, now exiled in Spain, crushed Maduro, securing around two-thirds of the votes.
Venezuela scarcely cultivates coca, the leaf from which cocaine is made, and has few labs. Most cocaine intended for the U.S. is sent from Colombia’s Pacific coast and neighboring Ecuador. Unlike drug trafficking organizations such as the Jalisco cartel in Mexico, the Cartel de los Soles is not a hierarchical cartel but rather a loose network made up primarily of military officials facilitating drug shipments while receiving bribes in the process, said Phil Gunson, an analyst based in Caracas for the International Crisis Group, which works to prevent violent conflicts in Venezuela.
“It’s a convenient label for a loose and sometimes conflicting group of generals and high-ranking government officials that thrives amid Venezuela’s endemic corruption,” Gunson said.
The Wall Street Jornal/ José de Córdoba