A judge from the federal court of the southern district of New York made public this Saturday a new accusation against the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, which expands the one presented in 2020 and indicates him again as the leader of a drug trafficking and narcoterrorism network that for more than two decades would have used the Venezuelan State to introduce large quantities of cocaine into the United States.
The new accusation, known as “substitutionary indictment,” is an expanded version of the one presented in March 2020 against Nicolás Maduro that adds new charges and new defendants – including for the first time his wife, Cilia Flores, and one of his children.
Thus, the number of accused rises to six and the Minister of the Interior, Diosdado Cabello Rondón, who was already accused in 2020, remains charged.
Likewise, according to the court document revealed today, the charges include four different accusations related to narcoterrorism, conspiracy to import cocaine and crimes with weapons and destructive devices, the same ones that appeared in the original 2020 indictment.
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Maduro had been charged in Manhattan in March 2020, in a case based on an investigation by the DEA anti-drug agency.
With those accusations still pending, Secretary of State Marco Rubio described him in September 2025 as a “fugitive from American justice.”
Then, the United States Government, which does not recognize Maduro as the legitimate president of Venezuela, raised the reward for information leading to his arrest to $50 million.
Accused of “flooding the United States with cocaine”
According to the accusation now unsealed, Maduro headed the drug trafficking organization Cartel de los Soles, the name given to the high-ranking Venezuelan military commanders, who wear suns on their insignia.
He argued that Nicolás Maduro “participates in, perpetuates and protects a culture of corruption in which powerful Venezuelan elites enrich themselves through drug trafficking and the protection of their drug trafficking partners.”
“The profits from this illegal activity flow to corrupt civil, military and intelligence officials, who operate in a clientelistic system directed by those at the top, known as the Cartel of the Suns, in reference to the sun insignia displayed on the uniforms of Venezuelan military high command.”
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Under his leadership, the brief maintains, the organization not only sought to enrich itself and consolidate its political power, but also to “flood” the United States with cocaine and “use the drug as a weapon” against that country.
The document describes the Venezuelan Government as an “illegitimate” power, recalling that Maduro’s re-election in 2018 was widely questioned by the international community and that in 2019 the National Assembly declared him a usurper of office.
He adds that more than 50 countries, including the United States, “stopped recognizing him as president” and that “the elections held in 2024 were once again the subject of strong international criticism, despite the fact that Maduro proclaimed himself the winner.”
According to estimates cited in the indictment, the State Department calculated that by 2020 between 200 and 250 tons of cocaine transited through Venezuelan territory each year towards the United States.
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Prosecutors describe alliances with the FARC, the ELN, the Sinaloa cartel, the Zetas and the Tren de Aragua criminal gang, as well as the use of diplomatic passports, airports controlled by authorities and maritime routes protected by state forces to move drugs.
“On various occasions since 1999 or around that date, Venezuelan officials, including Nicolás Maduro Moros, Diosdado Cabello Rondón and Ramón Rodríguez Chacin, the defendants, have associated with narcoterrorists from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (“FARC”), the National Liberation Army (“ELN”), the Sinaloa Cartel, Los Zetas and the Tren de Aragua (“TdA”), including the leader of the TdA, Héctor Rustenford Guerrero Flores, alias “Niño Guerrero”, the accused,” according to the document.
“In short, Maduro Moros and his accomplices have partnered for decades with some of the most violent and prolific drug traffickers and narcoterrorists in the world, and have relied on corrupt officials throughout the region to distribute tons of cocaine to the United States,” he added.
The case is pending before federal Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein, magistrate of the Southern District of New York since 1998, who was already supervising the case opened in 2020.
The US judicial system has precedents for prosecuting former captured or extradited Latin American leaders, such as Panamanian Manuel Antonio Noriega or former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, also tried in US federal courts.
The charges Maduro faces carry potentially very high penalties, especially those related to narcoterrorism and possession of automatic weapons, which, combined with drug trafficking, can lead to long prison sentences.
With information from EFE
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