MIAMI.- For some years now, the former US naval intelligence officer Jesus Romero has been warning about the ruler’s link Nicolas Maduro with the Cartel de Los Soles in VenezuelaNow, information from a federal indictment that points to Maduro as the leader of this cartel confirms Romero’s concerns and inevitably exposes the security weaknesses and lack of decisive action by the current Administration to curb organized crime in Latin America, whose chain of deaths impacts the United States.
It is symbolic that this July 10, the day Romero published his book The final flight: The Queen of the Airand article published in the Miami Herald points to the relationship between the Venezuelan dictator and the intricacies of transnational crime, specifically cocaine trafficking.
The indictment, explains journalist Antonio María Delgado in the article, was filed in a federal court in New York against leaders of the drug cartel in Venezuela. According to the document, Nicolás Maduro “helped manage and ultimately lead the Cartel de Los Soles as it gained power in Venezuela.” It also highlights that Maduro’s involvement in drug trafficking is even more extensive than has been estimated so far, as he has had a leading role among the top brass of this criminal organization.
DIARIO LAS AMÉRICAS offers in its printed edition of Friday, July 12, as well as in its digital edition, an exclusive interview with Jesús Romero, in which he discusses the threats posed by drug trafficking in the region.
New accusations and investigations
In his book, released this Wednesday and available in AmazonJesús Romero reveals the ins and outs of a high-caliber investigation coordinated by US military intelligence and Latin American entities, which yielded numerous pieces of evidence about Maduro’s involvement with the Cartel de Los Soles. In addition, the investigation he carried out with his team, detecting and analyzing aircraft in hostile Latin American territory, had the power to cut the wings of an illegal empire of airplanes registered here in the US, which were used to transport huge quantities of cocaine, leaving a trail of death and corruption in their wake.
As Jesus Romero pointed out in an interview with DIARIO LAS AMÉRICAS, “Maduro is the head of the Cartel de Los Soles, and he is allowing these planes to enter Venezuelan airspace. Furthermore, Lopez Obrador knows what is happening and allows the planes operating for the Mexican cartels to leave Mexico and for the drugs to return through Mexico. It is a conspiracy that I think needs to be brought to light.”
And, as he predicted, it is coming to light. The federal indictment notes that Maduro’s influence in the cartel grew after Chavez’s death when he assumed the presidency of Venezuela and when the interest in drug trafficking operations began to intertwine with state affairs. That is what Romero claims in his book, co-authored with Steve Tochterman, a former official of the Federal Aviation Administration, FAA.
Romero also highlighted that 2020 was a crucial year for the fight against drugs, as the United States accused Nicolás Maduro of drug trafficking, and the fraud and conspiracy plot of the company that registered planes used to transport drugs, Aircraft Guaranty Corporation, created by Debra Lynn Mercer-Erwin and based in Oklahoma City, came to light.
Romero has more than 37 years of combined service in the U.S. government, and holds multiple military and service decorations, including the War on Terrorism Service Medal, the Defense Meritorious Service Medal, and several awards from the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy. He has served as a defense contractor for the North American Division of British Aerospace Systems in Washington, D.C.
Criminal alliances: Venezuela and the FARC
According to Delgado in the Miami Herald article, the U.S. State Department has estimated the annual volume of drugs passing through Venezuela at more than 250 tons. But, he adds, experts currently believe the current volume leaving Venezuela is double that amount.
As Romero estimated in his testimony, between 2017 and 2022, some 120 tons of cocaine entered the United States annually, only counting the drugs transported by air. That amount of cocaine represents some 3 billion dollars, hence the efficiency of its route was paid for with death, pollution, and corruption.
The indictment says Maduro was involved in negotiations to secure shipments of several tons of cocaine from the FARC in exchange for the delivery of money and weapons to the guerrilla group. Romero said this in a recent interview: “The Venezuelan generals who are serving sentences for drug trafficking in the United States (Clíver Alcalá Cordones and Hugo ‘El Pollo’ Carvajal) were coordinating everything in Venezuela and Colombia with Jesús Santrich and Iván Márquez (FARC).”
He added: “Santrich was in charge of the cocaine shipments that left through Catatumbo, through Zulia. Debra’s planes were loaded with cocaine, and the Venezuelan generals, the Cartel de Los Soles, needed Santrich, from the FARC. Iván Márquez was in charge of placing the cocaine in Apure, in the southwest of Venezuela, the second place where the planes were loaded with drugs.”
The dots connect. As the federal indictment reads, and the Miami Herald quotes, “air shipments were often dispatched from clandestine airstrips, typically made of dirt or grass, concentrated in Apure state.”
The indictment also reveals that Chavez asked Maduro in 2005 to help the cartel identify judges who were unwilling to provide protection to the FARC and its drug trafficking activities, so that they could be fired. It adds that around that year Maduro allegedly received $5 million from drug trafficking profits, in addition to being involved in a money laundering operation, and that they used Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) to launder drug money.
Tons of cocaine to undermine national security
What does the Venezuelan regime gain by promoting this criminal network? “The Venezuelan regime has two key reasons for entering the drug trade,” says the indictment cited by the Miami Herald. These are the enrichment of the members of the Cartel de Los Soles and, even more dangerous, the objective of flooding the United States with cocaine, multiplying the addiction crisis in the country.
As Romero warns in his interview with DLA, and also details in powerful testimonies and analyses of on-the-ground investigations, “the real threat here is communism,” because ultimately the drug trafficking operations facilitated in leftist countries seek to “enrich their 21st Century Socialist agendas” and, therefore, undermine the security of the United States.