Venezuela: Rise of a narcostate
by Roger Noriega
Venezuela is a narcostate, controlled by senior political leaders and security officials who have used state resources and state-owned companies in the cocaine trade. For example, US authorities have gathered documents and eyewitness testimonies implicating officers of the state-run oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela S.A. (PDVSA), in engaging in transactions and money laundering on behalf of cocaine smugglers within the government. Sources also have informed US authorities that the campaigns of the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela have been financed by drug-smuggling and money-laundering profits.
Although the Venezuelan regime’s complicity in narcotics trafficking has been rumored for years, the depth and breadth of that government’s lawlessness was revealed by the Wall Street Journal in a May 2015 article regarding ongoing US federal investigations into several high-ranking Venezuelan officials’ involvement in cocaine smuggling.
“A leading target, according to a Justice Department official and other American authorities, is National Assembly President Diosdado Cabello, considered the country’s second most-powerful man,” the article reported. “There is extensive evidence to justify that he [Cabello] is one of the heads, if not the head, of the cartel,” said the Justice Department source, referring to an alleged conspiracy involving military officers and other senior officials.
It may be difficult to understand why a government whose officials have access to vast oil revenues would see the need to be involved in smuggling illicit drugs. According to eyewitness sources, beginning in 2005, Chávez personally directed the exchange of vast sums of oil revenue for cocaine with the Colombian Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) guerrillas to sustain their war against the democratically-elected government of President Álvaro Uribe — a bitter foe of Chávez.
Like no Latin American leader before him, Chávez put all of the state’s resources at the disposal of his transnational organized-crime network. In addition to encouraging other governments to refuse to cooperate with US antidrug efforts, he used his diplomatic muscle to brazenly defend his criminal allies. In 2009, for example, he rallied regional governments — including the United States, for a time — to demand that Manuel Zelaya, an alleged drug smuggler, be restored to the presidency in Honduras. He also has sustained governments in Bolivia, El Salvador, and elsewhere that collaborate in the illegal drug trade.
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Read more: www.aei.org
Although the Venezuelan regime’s complicity in narcotics trafficking has been rumored for years, the depth and breadth of that government’s lawlessness was revealed by the Wall Street Journal in a May 2015 article regarding ongoing US federal investigations into several high-ranking Venezuelan officials’ involvement in cocaine smuggling.
“A leading target, according to a Justice Department official and other American authorities, is National Assembly President Diosdado Cabello, considered the country’s second most-powerful man,” the article reported. “There is extensive evidence to justify that he [Cabello] is one of the heads, if not the head, of the cartel,” said the Justice Department source, referring to an alleged conspiracy involving military officers and other senior officials.
It may be difficult to understand why a government whose officials have access to vast oil revenues would see the need to be involved in smuggling illicit drugs. According to eyewitness sources, beginning in 2005, Chávez personally directed the exchange of vast sums of oil revenue for cocaine with the Colombian Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) guerrillas to sustain their war against the democratically-elected government of President Álvaro Uribe — a bitter foe of Chávez.
Like no Latin American leader before him, Chávez put all of the state’s resources at the disposal of his transnational organized-crime network. In addition to encouraging other governments to refuse to cooperate with US antidrug efforts, he used his diplomatic muscle to brazenly defend his criminal allies. In 2009, for example, he rallied regional governments — including the United States, for a time — to demand that Manuel Zelaya, an alleged drug smuggler, be restored to the presidency in Honduras. He also has sustained governments in Bolivia, El Salvador, and elsewhere that collaborate in the illegal drug trade.
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Read more: www.aei.org
To understand the role Venezuela plays in transnational organized crime threatening the Western Hemisphere, read my full report on this subject here.
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