US indictment links Caribbean politicians to Maduro’s cocaine network
Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar said she was not surprised that the United States’ indictment of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro includes allegations that Caribbean politicians were complicit in cocaine trafficking. The superseding indictment, unsealed by a US federal grand jury in the Southern District of New York on Saturday (January 3), details grand jury charges against Maduro and other high-ranking Venezuelan officials.
The document claims that Caribbean politicians financially benefited from drug traffickers in exchange for protection from law enforcement. According to the indictment, Maduro and “corrupt” members of his regime enabled a system of corruption fueled by drug trafficking across the region. Cocaine shipments through Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico were allegedly supported by systemic bribery, with traffickers paying off politicians who, in turn, used illicit funds to strengthen and entrench their power.While the indictment does not specifically name Trinidad and Tobago, it identifies the Caribbean as a major corridor for cocaine allegedly trafficked by Maduro.
The indictment also names the Caribbean as a key transshipment route, stating: “So, too, were politicians along the ‘Caribbean route’ corrupted by cocaine traffickers, who would pay them for protection from arrest and to allow favoured traffickers to operate with impunity as they trafficked cocaine from Venezuela north towards the United States.“ Thus, at every step, relying on the producers in Colombia, nine transporters and distributors in Venezuela, and recipients and redistributors on transshipment points north, the traffickers enriched themselves and their corrupt benefactors who protected and aided them.”
