Patriot Brief

• A newly released indictment details how Nicolás Maduro and his inner circle allegedly ran a narco-state using diplomatic cover.

• Prosecutors accuse Maduro of working with major cartels including Sinaloa and Los Zetas to move cocaine and drug money.

• The charges outline years of corruption involving Venezuela’s military, intelligence services, and terrorist organizations.

The indictment reads less like a court filing and more like the organizational chart of a criminal enterprise that happened to control a country.

According to federal prosecutors, Nicolás Maduro didn’t merely tolerate drug trafficking — he allegedly ran it. Diplomatic passports sold to traffickers. Private jets shielded from inspection under claims of diplomatic immunity. Cocaine seized by Venezuelan authorities only to be handed back to the military and flown north. This wasn’t corruption on the margins. This was the system.

What’s especially damning is how early and how openly this allegedly started. Long before Maduro became president, prosecutors say he was already facilitating cartel operations as foreign minister, selling diplomatic protection to criminals so drug money could move freely from Mexico into Venezuela. His wife, Cilia Flores, is accused of personally greasing the wheels — allegedly taking bribes to arrange meetings between traffickers and Venezuela’s top anti-drug official, who then became part of the scheme.

The indictment also paints a picture of Venezuela as a protected transit hub for the worst actors in the hemisphere. Multi-ton cocaine shipments allegedly moved through ports under military protection. Colombian terror groups, Mexican cartels, and Venezuelan officials all working in coordination. The state wasn’t fighting narco-terrorism — it was monetizing it.

This is why the Trump administration treated Maduro not as a legitimate head of state but as the leader of a criminal syndicate. The arrest wasn’t symbolic. It was overdue. And if even half of what’s laid out in this indictment holds up in court, it confirms what many already suspected: Venezuela wasn’t hijacked by criminals. It was governed by them.

From Breitbart:

The newly released criminal indictment filed against now-arrested Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro, his wife, and others reveals key details about how they used diplomatic planes to fly drug money from Mexico into Venezuela. The indictment also shows a long-standing trafficking relationship with the Sinaloa Cartel and Los Zetas (now called Cartel Del Noreste).

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi released the indictment on Saturday morning, just hours after U.S. special forces arrested Maduro during an early morning raid in Venezuela.

While the indictment focuses primarily 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, the court document alleges a close business relationship between Venezuela’s key players, Colombian terrorist organizations, and Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel and Los Zetas.

According to U.S. prosecutors, between 2006 and 2008, when he was the minister of foreign affairs, Nicolas Maduro sold diplomatic passports to various drug traffickers to allow them to move drug proceeds from Mexico into Venezuela under diplomatic cover. Maduro would also provide diplomatic immunity to private airplanes used by drug traffickers to be able to fly between the two countries without scrutiny from law enforcement and military officials. The planes were not carrying diplomatic materials, but were loaded with cartel cash, the indictment revealed.

Federal prosecutors also alleged that in 2007, Maduro’s wife, Celia Flores de Maduro, took a hefty bribe to arrange a meeting between top drug traffickers and Venezuela’s top drug enforcement agent at the time, Nestor Reverol Torres. As a result of that meeting, Reverol Torres agreed to receive $100,000 per drug shipment and would share a portion of that bribe with Maduro’s wife, the indictment alleges.

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 criminal indictment alleges that between 2003 and 2011, Diosdado Cabello worked with Colombian cartels and Los Zetas to move multi-ton shipments of cocaine through Venezuela into Mexican shipping ports. The drugs were moved in shipping containers that averaged five tons but at times carried as much as 20 tons of cocaine. The drugs were allegedly protected by Cabello and Venezuela’s top military officials known as “The Generals”.

Federal prosecutors allege that since 2011, the then leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, financed several drug laboratories in Colombia and that those drugs were then moved into Venezuela, where that country’s military protected them before being moved north towards Mexico and eventually reaching the United States.

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Photo Credit: U.S. Border Patrol/Rio Grande Valley Sector