Image source, Getty Images
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- Author, Writing
- Author's title, BBC News World
The United States reported Thursday that it doubled the reward for information that leads to the arrest of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro from US $ 25 million to US $ 50 million.
When making the announcement, US attorney general, PAM Bondi, said Maduro was directly linked to drug trafficking operations.
Washington accuses him of being “one of the world's greatest drug traffickers.”
The president of the USA, Donald Trump, has been a critic of Maduro, who maintained power in January after elections marked by accusations of electoral fraud.
The results were widely rejected by the international community.
For his part, the Venezuelan Chancellor, Yvan Gil, said that the new reward was “pathetic” and described it as “political propaganda.”
“It is not surprising, coming from who comes,” said Gil, who accused Bondi of trying a “desperate distraction” of the headlines related to criticism for the management of the case of the businessman accused of sexual abuse of minors Jeffrey Epstein.
During Trump's first mandate, the US government accused Maduro and other senior Venezuelan officials of various crimes, such as drug trafficking, corruption and drug trafficking.
At that time, the US Department of Justice said Maduro had collaborated with the insurgent group of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, FARC, “to use cocaine as a weapon to 'flood' United States.”
For that reason, in March 2020 he had offered a reward of US $ 15 million for information that led to his capture.
And in January of this year, when Maduro assumed his new mandate, Washington increased the figure to US $ 25 million.
Image source, State Department
Collaborator
In a video posted on the social network X this Thursday, Pam Bondi accused Maduro of coordinating with groups such as the Aragua train (a criminal organization of Venezuelan origin declared terrorist by the Trump administration) and the Mexican Sinaloa poster.
He said that the United States Drug Control Agency (DEA) had “seized 30 tons of cocaine linked to Maduro and their relatives, with almost seven tons linked to the Venezuelan president.”
Maduro had previously rejected Washington's claims about his direct participation in drug trafficking.
The accusations of the US prosecutor are an extension of the tensions of years ago among the US governments and Venezuela.
Maduro, leader of the United Socialist Party and Successor of Hugo Chávez in 2013, has been repeatedly accused of repressing opposition groups and silencing dissent in Venezuela.
Image source, Getty Images
On July of last year, after the controversial results in the elections – in which the government refused to present the minutes of the voting points – massive manifestations of rejection were recorded, which were in many cases repressed with violence by official agents.
Before making this decision, the US government had reported that last June Hugo Carvajal, former head of Venezuelan military intelligence, was convicted of several drug trafficking positions after being arrested in Madrid and tried in the US.
Carvajal had been a feared espionage chief known as “El Chicken”, but fled from Venezuela after asking the Army to support an opposition candidate and overthrew Maduro.
Initially he denied drug charges, but later changed his statement to guilty, which fed the speculations that he had reached an agreement with the US authorities for a minor sentence in exchange for incriminating information about Maduro.
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