US Justice Department releases new indictment of Nicolás Maduro and his wife

The United States Justice Department has released a new indictment of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife for their alleged role in a narco-terrorism conspiracy.

The indictment accuses Maduro of leading “a corrupt, illegitimate government that, for decades, has leveraged government power to protect and promote illegal activity, including drug trafficking.”

It alleges that the drug trafficking efforts “enriched and entrenched Venezuela’s political and military elite.”

US authorities allege that Maduro partnered with “some of the most violent and prolific drug traffickers and narco-terrorists in the world” to bring tonnes of cocaine into the US, according to the indictment.

Authorities estimate that as much as 250 tonnes of cocaine were trafficked through Venezuela by 2020, according to the indictment.

The drugs were moved on go-fast vessels, fishing boats and container ships or via planes from clandestine airstrips, authorities allege.

Maduro and other Venezuelan officials were indicted in 2020 on “narco-terrorism” conspiracy charges.

The Justice Department, during Trump’s first term in office, charged in several indictments that Maduro had effectively converted Venezuela into a criminal enterprise at the service of drug traffickers and terrorist groups as he and his allies stole billions from the South American country.

The coordinated unsealing of indictments against 14 officials and government-connected individuals, and rewards of $55 million for Maduro and four others, attacked all the key planks of what then-Attorney General William Barr called the “corrupt Venezuelan regime,” including the Maduro-dominated judiciary and the powerful armed forces.

One indictment by prosecutors in New York accused Maduro and socialist party boss Diosdado Cabello, head of the rubber-stamping constitutional assembly, of conspiring with Colombian rebels and members of the military “to flood the United States with cocaine” and use the drug trade as a “weapon against America.”

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