Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his spouse arrived at Stewart Airport simply north of New York Metropolis on Saturday afternoon, hours after their seize throughout a daring U.S. navy operation in Caracas.
Maduro and his spouse, Cilia Flores, had been captured in a single day from their house in Caracas. They had been transported to the united statesIwo Jima warship earlier than being flown to New York to face prison expenses.
In a superseding indictment filed within the Southern District of New York in opposition to Maduro, members of his household and his cupboard, the U.S. is accusing the South American chief of conspiracy to commit narco-terrorism and to import cocaine. He’s additionally accused of possession of and conspiracy to own “Machineguns and Damaging Gadgets,” in keeping with the indictment unsealed Saturday by Legal professional Basic Pam Bondi.
“They may quickly face the complete wrath of American justice on American soil in American courts,” Bondi mentioned.
The fees seem like the identical as those who had been filed in a 2020 indictment of Maduro and several other key aides.
The indictment, ready by New York U.S. Legal professional Jay Clayton, says: “For over 25 years, leaders of Venezuela have abused their positions of public belief and corrupted once-legitimate establishments to import tons of cocaine into the US,” earlier than alleging that Maduro “is on the forefront of that corruption and has partnered together with his co-conspirators to make use of his illegally obtained authority and the establishments he corroded to move hundreds of tons of cocaine to the US.”
The U.S. authorities additionally claimed that Flores is concerned in her husband’s alleged crimes. In accordance with the indictment, Flores allegedly brokered a gathering between a large-scale drug trafficker and the director of Venezuela’s Nationwide Anti-Drug Workplace, Nestor Reverol Torres, and allegedly accepted a whole bunch of hundreds of {dollars} in bribes in 2007.
The trafficker organized a bribe to Reverol Torres — $100,000 per flight — to ship cocaine, prosecutors allege. Reverol Torres was indicted in 2015 by U.S. prosecutors in New York.
Within the indictment filed in opposition to Maduro in 2020, federal prosecutors alleged that the Venezuelan chief and different senior Venezuelan authorities officers collaborated with the Colombian guerrilla group Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, or FARC, to site visitors cocaine and weapons to the U.S.
Maduro has previously denied the accusations in opposition to him.
Hours after the operation, President Trump mentioned the US would run Venezuela at the least quickly and faucet its huge oil reserves to promote to different nations.
