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The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York has accused Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro of leading a regional drug trafficking network that for more than two decades allegedly operated from Venezuela to the United States using air routes and subsequent overland transfers through Central America, including Nicaragua, according to the formal indictment filed in a U.S. federal court.
The court document details that the so-called Cartel of the Suns—designated a terrorist organization by the United States in November 2025—allegedly dispatched shipments of cocaine from Venezuelan territory to Mexico and then to the United States, using Nicaragua and Honduras as strategic transit points.
According to the indictment, the cartel operated in alliance with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), an organization designated as terrorist by the U.S. State Department since 1997, which became one of the world’s largest producers of cocaine.
In 2009, the filing underscores, senior Venezuelan officials—including Maduro himself, who was serving as foreign minister at the time—along with Diosdado Cabello and Hugo Armando Carvajal Barrios, who also appear on the list of defendants, held a meeting with FARC representatives in which they discussed the shipment of a four-ton load of cocaine.
“Cabello Rondón ordered the FARC to deliver the cocaine to a specific point in Venezuela, where a plane would be waiting to transport it to Nicaragua for subsequent shipment to Mexico and importation into the United States,” the indictment stated on January 3, 2026—the same day the operation called Absolute Resolution took place, which included multiple airstrikes in Venezuela and resulted in the arrest of Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores.
The meeting also addressed the coup in Honduras against then-president Manuel Zelaya in June 2009, and Cabello Rondón warned that the political instability could “screw up the business.”
Indictment Does Not Charge Nicaraguan Officials
The indictment, however, does not directly implicate officials of the Daniel Ortega–Rosario Murillo regime, though it does mention Nicaragua as one of the regional countries through which the shipments allegedly passed en route to the United States.
The Ortega–Murillo regime has not publicly responded to the references contained in the U.S. indictment.
Since Daniel Ortega’s return to power in 2007, Nicaragua has maintained a strategic alliance with the Venezuelan government, first under Hugo Chávez (1954–2013) and later under Nicolás Maduro. That relationship has included political and economic cooperation as well as mutual diplomatic support in international forums.
Nicaraguan political scientist Manuel Orozco, director of the Migration, Remittances, and Development program at Inter-American Dialogue, explained in the article titled What Is at Stake in Nicaragua After Maduro’s Fall in Venezuela?, published in CONFIDENCIAL, that Maduro’s capture following the U.S. military airstrike raises new questions about the fate of Rosario Murillo, her children, and the Nicaraguan military.
The Ortega–Murillo regime, in a brief statement, demanded “respect for the sovereignty of the Venezuelan people” and called for Maduro’s release.
What Is Nicolás Maduro Accused Of?
The document—signed by U.S. federal prosecutor Geoffrey S. Berman and filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York—charges Maduro with narco-terrorism, conspiracy to import cocaine into the United States, and the use, possession, and conspiracy to possess weapons of war, including machine guns and destructive devices, as part of a criminal network that operated for more than two decades.
In addition to Nicolás Maduro and Diosdado Cabello, the other defendants are:
- Hugo Armando Carvajal Barrios, alias “El Pollo,” former Venezuelan military intelligence chief, who pleaded guilty in a Manhattan federal court.
- Cliver Antonio Alcalá Cordones, former Venezuelan general serving a 21-year prison sentence in the United States.
- Luciano Marín Arango, alias “Iván Márquez,” FARC dissident.
- Seuxis Paucis Hernández Solarte, alias “Jesús Santrich,” killed in 2021 in an armed confrontation in Venezuela.
“The Cartel of the Suns was a Venezuelan drug trafficking organization composed of high-ranking Venezuelan officials who abused the Venezuelan people and corrupted legitimate institutions of Venezuela—including parts of the military, the intelligence apparatus, the legislature, and the judiciary—to facilitate the importation of tons of cocaine into the United States,” the indictment states.
Shipments Headed to the U.S.
The indictment reveals that by around 2004, the U.S. Department of State estimated that 250 tons or more of cocaine passed through Venezuela annually.
“Maritime shipments were sent north from the Venezuelan coast using speedboats, fishing vessels, and container ships. Aerial shipments were often dispatched from clandestine airstrips, usually dirt or grass, concentrated in Apure state,” the document specifies.
The Department of State reported that approximately 75 unauthorized flights suspected of drug trafficking entered Honduran airspace in 2010 alone, using what is known as the “air bridge,” a cocaine route between Venezuela and Honduras.
