The term “Cartel de los Soles” (Cartel of the Suns) first emerged in Venezuelan journalism and investigations in 1993, when two National Guard generals of the Anti-Drug National Command were investigated for alleged drug trafficking crimes. The name derives from the sun insignias worn on the epaulettes of Venezuelan military generals, distinguishing them from officers in other countries who wear stars. Brigade commanders wore a single sun, while division commanders bore double suns, giving rise to the phrase that evolved from “Cartel of the Sun” to “Cartel of the Suns.”
The initial investigation focused on Ramón Guillén Dávila and Orlando Hernández Villegas, both National Guard generals. Guillén allegedly approved a cocaine shipment from Venezuela to the United States as part of a CIA operation designed to infiltrate Colombian cartels. This incident marked the beginning of a pattern that would continue for decades, linking high-ranking Venezuelan military officials to drug trafficking operations.
Cartel de los Soles is not a traditional, hierarchical drug trafficking organization. Rather, it functions as Venezuelan slang dating back to the 1990s, used to describe officials accused of being corrupted by drug trafficking proceeds.
Cartel de los Soles operates as a loose network of cells within Venezuela’s armed forces spanning from the lowest to the highest ranks. These cells exist within the army, navy, air force, and Bolivarian National Guard. The relationship between these cells remains unclear, and it is uncertain whether they interact with one another at all. Cartel de los Soles is a series of normally disconnected cells embedded within the Venezuelan military rather than a unified, vertically organized drug-trafficking organization.
In January 2026, following the capture of Nicolás Maduro, the U.S. Department of Justice issued a revised indictment that notably abandoned the characterization of the Cartel de los Soles as a formal organization. Instead, prosecutors reframed it as a patronage system and a culture of corruption tied to drug money inside Venezuela’s military and political elite.
The transformation of Venezuela into a major drug transshipment point accelerated dramatically under President Hugo Chávez’s administration, which began in 1999. Several interconnected factors contributed to this development.
Three major developments in the early 2000s created the conditions for the Cartel de los Soles to flourish. First, Colombia’s multibillion-dollar “Plan Colombia,” signed with the United States, allowed Colombian forces to intensify operations against guerrilla groups such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN). This increased military pressure pushed these organizations to shift their operations into Venezuela’s poorly policed border states.
In 2002, the collapse of peace talks between the FARC and Colombian President Andrés Pastrana deprived the rebels of a large safe haven in southern Colombia, forcing them to seek new refuges in Venezuela. Third, the attempted coup that year briefly ousted Chávez, diverting his attention to political battles and creating a power vacuum in border security.
Beginning in approximately 1999, while the FARC was purporting to negotiate toward peace with the Colombian government, FARC leaders agreed with leaders of what became known as the Cartel de los Soles to relocate some of their operations to Venezuela under state protection. The FARC and Venezuelan military officials then dispatched processed cocaine from Venezuela to the United States via transshipment points in the Caribbean and Central America, particularly Honduras.
The relationship between the Chávez administration and the FARC became increasingly documented. In 2008, Colombian forces raided a FARC camp and seized laptops belonging to commander Raul Reyes. Documents found on these devices, which Interpol authenticated, showed that Chávez allegedly offered payments of as much as $300 million to the FARC and that FARC rebels sought Venezuelan assistance in acquiring surface-to-air missiles. The documents also purportedly showed that Chávez met personally with FARC rebel leaders.
By 2011, Chávez’s government funded FARC’s Caracas office and granted it access to intelligence services. Political analysts have characterized this relationship as strategic tolerance, with senior regime figures showing minimal prioritization of counter-narcotics as a national security concern.
The Venezuelan government under Chávez expanded corruption to unprecedented levels in an already corrupt military. Chávez gave military officials millions of dollars for social programs that allegedly disappeared, while also granting legal immunity to drug trafficking officials to maintain power and loyalty.
The militarization of Venezuela under Chávez increased the reach of men in uniform and facilitated participation in illegal activities. In 2005, all branches of the National Bolivarian Armed Forces were assigned to combat drug trafficking in Venezuela, granting data once held only by the Bolivarian National Guard to the army, navy, and air force. This data created competition within the ranks of the military, who fought to make deals with the FARC to actively partake in drug trafficking.
A pivotal moment came on August 5, 2005, when Chávez announced the expulsion of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration from Venezuela. Chávez accused the DEA of using the fight against drug trafficking as a mask for espionage and intelligence gathering against his government. This decision eliminated U.S. anti-drug initiatives in Venezuela, including plans to modernize inspection technology at Puerto Cabello, a key port for cocaine exports.
Following the DEA’s expulsion and amid the agency’s expanding partnership with Colombia, Venezuela became increasingly attractive to drug traffickers. The absence of U.S. anti-drug efforts combined with weak domestic enforcement capacity allowed drug trafficking networks to flourish.
The results were dramatic. In 2004, the U.S. Department of State estimated that approximately 50 tons of cocaine transited Venezuela. By 2007, the U.S. Government Accountability Office put the figure at roughly 250 tons annually. This represented an astonishing fivefold increase in just three years. By 2020, U.S. State Department estimates suggested that between 200 and 250 tons of cocaine were still being trafficked through Venezuela annually.
In 2004, several National Guard members for drug traffic tried to use three airline passengers, including a U.S. citizen, at Caracas’s international airport. In a separate incident, other National Guard officers were arrested after being caught loading cocaine onto a private plane at Maiquetía airport (now Simón Bolívar International Airport). These incidents revealed how the military seized shipments when traffickers refused to pay bribes.
The term Cartel of the Suns returned to public prominence in 2004 when journalist and city councilman Mauro Marcano accused senior National Guard officials, including intelligence chief Alexis Maneiro, of drug ties. Marcano was murdered later that year. The case suggested systemic corruption within the National Guard, but the government made only weak efforts to investigate. No case was opened against Maneiro, who was simply reassigned.
In September 2013, French authorities seized approximately 1.3 tons of cocaine on a commercial flight from Caracas to Paris. Thirty-one suitcases containing the drugs were placed on the flight by personnel of the Venezuelan National Guard. According to the subsequent U.S. indictment, Maduro convened a meeting with Diosdado Cabello and intelligence chief Hugo Carvajal following the seizure, admonished them for using the same airport after a similar 2006 incident in Mexico, and directed them to use other well-established drug routes. He then allegedly authorized arrests of lower-ranking military officials to divert scrutiny from senior leadership.
In January 2015, Leamsy Salazar, the former security chief of both Chávez and Diosdado Cabello, defected to the United States and entered witness protection with assistance from the DEA’s Special Operations Division. Salazar accused Cabello, then National Assembly President, of being one of the Cartel of the Suns’ leaders. Specifically, Salazar stated that he witnessed Cabello giving orders to transport tons of cocaine out of Venezuela via the FARC in Colombia to the United States and Europe.
Starting in 2008, the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control began systematically sanctioning Venezuelan officials for drug-related activities. In 2008, OFAC sanctioned three officials allegedly serving as FARC contacts: Hugo Armando Carvajal Barrios (nicknamed “El Pollo”), former military intelligence chief; Henry de Jesús Rangel Silva, later named defense minister; and Ramón Emilio Rodríguez Chacín, a former interior and justice minister.
In 2016, U.S. prosecutors indicted Néstor Reverol, Venezuela’s former anti-narcotics chief, and his deputy, Edylberto Molina, on drug trafficking charges. The day after the charges became public, President Maduro appointed Reverol as interior minister, in what many observers saw as a defiant response to U.S. pressure.
In 2017, the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned then-industry minister Tareck El Aissami for playing a significant role in drug trafficking, alleging he facilitated shipments for major traffickers and offered protection to multiple drug kingpins.
The most high-profile case directly linking the Maduro family to drug trafficking involved Cilia Flores’s nephews, Efraín Antonio Campo Flores and Franqui Francisco Flores de Freitas. This scandal, known as the Narcosobrinos (drug trafficker nephews) affair, provided concrete evidence of the alleged corruption at the highest levels.
Beginning in August 2015, the two nephews worked with others in Venezuela, Mexico, Honduras, and elsewhere, including at least one member of the FARC, in an effort to dispatch large loads of cocaine via private aircraft from premises controlled by Maduro at Simón Bolívar International Airport in Maiquetía. The nephews had been raised by Flores and Maduro as sons after a mudslide destroyed their childhood home.
During the DEA investigation, Campo Flores and Flores de Freitas told undercover agents that they intended to use part of the proceeds from their drug trafficking to fund Cilia Flores’s December 2015 campaign for a position in the Venezuelan National Assembly. In recorded conversations, Campo Flores stated: “We need the money… Why? Because the Americans are hitting us hard with money. Do you understand? The opposition… is getting an infusion of a lot of money… we’re at war [with the United States].”
On October 3, 2015, Campo Flores and Flores de Freitas traveled to San Pedro Sula, Honduras, via private jet to meet with a DEA cooperating witness to discuss sending hundreds of kilograms of cocaine from Simón Bolívar International Airport to Honduras. They stated that they would use their connections to send narcotics on legal flights from Caracas to Honduras, knowing that their relation to the president would open doors for the smuggling operation.
In late October 2015, two confidential sources working for the DEA, purporting to be Mexican drug traffickers, traveled to Caracas to meet with the defendants. On October 23, during a recorded meeting, Campo Flores explained: “My mom is running for the election and I need… $20 million… In other words, the issue of the money… we need it by December [2015].” He reiterated: “We want to take possession again of the… National Assembly and… several places with power.”
On November 10, 2015, Campo Flores and Flores de Freitas flew on a private jet to Haiti, accompanied by two Venezuelan military personnel and two presidential honor guards, intending to pick up an initial multimillion-dollar payment for the cocaine. The jet was a Cessna Citation 500 that belonged to Lebanese Venezuelan businessmen with ties to Diosdado Cabello. During the meeting at a restaurant near the airport, Haitian authorities and DEA agents raided the location and arrested the nephews after they attempted to deliver over 800 kilograms of cocaine.
On November 18, 2016, a federal jury in Manhattan convicted both nephews of conspiring to import cocaine into the United States. On December 14, 2017, they were each sentenced to 18 years in federal prison. The convictions were based on extensive audio and video recordings, electronic communications, and testimony from cooperating witnesses.
Two informants who allegedly observed the nephews were murdered shortly before and after their arrest, raising concerns that the drug trafficking operation was larger than suspected and that witnesses were being eliminated to protect higher-level officials.
The Maduro government dismissed the charges as fabrication orchestrated by the United States. In a November 25, 2016 statement, Maduro accused U.S. authorities of inventing the allegations, framing the operation as an act of aggression aimed at discrediting Venezuela’s leadership. Cilia Flores accused the United States of kidnapping her nephews.
The nephews were released in October 2022 as part of a prisoner swap negotiated with the United States during the Biden administration, in which five Venezuelan-American directors of CITGO, who were imprisoned in Venezuela, were returned to the U.S.
On March 26, 2020, the U.S. Justice Department announced a sweeping indictment against Nicolás Maduro, senior officials, and FARC leaders on narco-terrorism charges. The indictment alleged that since at least 1999, Maduro, Diosdado Cabello, Hugo Carvajal, and former General Cliver Alcalá acted as leaders and managers of the Cartel de los Soles.
According to the indictment, Maduro helped manage and ultimately lead the organization, which sought to get rich and flood the United States with cocaine, allegedly using the drug as a weapon against America. Prosecutors claimed that Maduro negotiated multi-ton shipments of FARC-produced cocaine, directed that the Cartel de los Soles provide military-grade weapons to the FARC, coordinated foreign affairs with Honduras and other countries to facilitate large-scale drug trafficking, and solicited assistance from FARC leadership in training an unsanctioned militia group.
The U.S. government initially offered a $15 million reward for information leading to Maduro’s arrest, which was raised to $25 million in January 2025 and then to $50 million in August 2025, the highest amount ever offered by the United States for the capture of an alleged criminal.
Cilia Adela Flores de Maduro, a political figure in her own right who has held senior positions including President of the National Assembly, Attorney General, and member of the National Constituent Assembly, faces serious allegations in the indictments.
According to U.S. prosecutors, Flores brokered a meeting between a large-scale drug trafficker and the director of Venezuela’s National Anti-Drug Office, Nestor Reverol Torres, in 2007. She allegedly accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes in connection with this arrangement. The trafficker arranged to pay Reverol Torres $100,000 per flight to facilitate cocaine shipments, and Flores allegedly received payments tied to cocaine flights.
Between 2004 and 2015, Maduro and Flores allegedly worked together to traffic cocaine, much of which had been previously seized by Venezuelan law enforcement, with the assistance of armed military escorts. During that time, the couple allegedly maintained their own state-sponsored gangs known as “colectivos” to facilitate and protect their drug trafficking operation.
U.S. authorities also accuse the couple of ordering kidnappings, beatings and murders of those who owed them drug money or otherwise undermined their operation, including allegedly setting up the murder of a local drug boss in Caracas.
Nicolás Ernesto Maduro Guerra, Maduro’s son who serves in Venezuela’s National Assembly, was also named in the indictment. Prosecutors alleged he discussed shipping cocaine to Miami and New York using cargo containers and met with FARC representatives in Colombia to arrange drug and weapons transfers. He was appointed to a specially created position, “Head of the Corps of Special Inspectors of the Presidency,” after his father assumed power.
Diosdado Cabello Rondón, currently serving as Venezuela’s Minister of the Interior, Justice and Peace, is widely regarded as one of the most powerful officials in Venezuela and a key figure in the alleged drug trafficking network.
Cabello has held numerous high-ranking positions in the Venezuelan government, including President of the National Assembly. He is considered by many analysts to represent one of three major centers of power in Venezuela, alongside the Maduro faction and the military establishment under Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López.
In 2018, the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned Cabello, his wife, and his brother for narcotics trafficking. OFAC stated that Cabello and others used their power within the Bolivarian government to personally profit from extortion, money laundering, and embezzlement. The agency alleged that Cabello coordinated drug trafficking activities with Vice President Tareck El Aissami and divided profits with President Maduro.
OFAC also alleged that Cabello would use public information to track wealthy individuals who were involved in trafficking, then steal their drugs and property to eliminate competition, essentially operating as both trafficker and enforcer simultaneously.
In 2020, a federal court in New York formally indicted Cabello for participating in cocaine trafficking alongside the FARC. The U.S. government initially placed a $10 million bounty on his head, which was raised to $25 million in 2025.
The most detailed allegations against Cabello came from his former security chief, Leamsy Salazar, who defected to the United States in 2015. Salazar claimed to have witnessed Cabello giving orders to transport tons of cocaine out of Venezuela, with shipments reportedly sent via the FARC in Colombia to the United States and Europe, potentially with Cuban assistance.
Following Maduro’s capture in January 2026, Cabello appeared in a bulletproof vest and helmet surrounded by armed men, declaring that Maduro’s abduction was a criminal, terrorist attack and calling on people to stay calm. He has posted numerous videos on social media showing militia members loyal to the state patrolling the streets of Caracas, demonstrating his continued influence over internal security mechanisms.
Cuba played a strategic role in developing and sustaining the Cartel de los Soles. Political scientists Juan Antonio Blanco and Emilio Morales argue that Cuba provides financial, logistical, and intelligence support to the network, granting it international protection and helping it bypass international sanctions imposed on Venezuela.
Cuba convinced Chávez that he would be able to remain in power if he subjected Venezuelan armed forces to inspection and monitoring by Cuban intelligence. Because of this arrangement, Blanco and Morales contend that the Cartel de los Soles represents a two-headed mafia state, with Cuba described as the key actor in the construction of the system.
Former U.S. diplomat Roger Noriega claimed that Cuban military officials, including Luis Alberto Rodríguez López-Calleja, the son-in-law of Raul Castro, are involved in drug trafficking operations. The Center for a Free Cuba alleged that the Cuban regime played a key role in establishing drug trafficking operations in Venezuela and that the alliance with FARC and ELN was forged under Cuba’s direction.
Cuba has been accused of providing sanctuary and training to officials and guerrillas involved in the network, and Cuban diplomats such as former Cuban ambassador to Venezuela Germán Sánchez Otero have been accused of participating in drug trafficking activities.
The reach of Venezuela’s drug trafficking operations extends far beyond its borders, involving connections with major international criminal organizations.
The FARC, before its 2016 peace deal with the Colombian government, regularly used the porous border region with Venezuela as a haven and hub for U.S.-bound cocaine shipments, often with the support or at least consent of Venezuelan security forces. Dissidents who rejected the peace agreement continued this work. The ELN guerrilla group is also involved in the illegal trade, maintaining operations in Venezuelan territory.
Venezuelan officials have partnered with Mexico’s most powerful drug trafficking organizations, including the Sinaloa Cartel and Los Zetas (later known as the Cartel del Noreste). These partnerships facilitate the movement of Colombian cocaine through Venezuela to Central America and Mexico, and ultimately to the United States.
The Venezuelan transnational gang Tren de Aragua, which the U.S. State Department designated as a foreign terrorist organization in February 2025, has been accused of working with the Cartel de los Soles. Héctor Rusthenford Guerrero Flores, known as Niño Guerrero, as the leader of Tren de Aragua and alleges he offered escort services for cocaine shipments and controlled coastal storage facilities.
Maritime shipments were shipped north from Venezuela’s coastline using go-fast vessels, fishing boats, and container ships. Air shipments were often dispatched from clandestine airstrips, typically made of dirt or grass, concentrated in Apure State. According to the U.S. Department of State, approximately 75 unauthorized flights suspected of drug-trafficking activities entered Honduran airspace in 2010 alone, using what became known as the air bridge cocaine route between Venezuela and Honduras.
In July 2025, the U.S. Treasury Department designated the Cartel de los Soles as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist, and in November 2025, Secretary of State Marco Rubio designated it as a Foreign Terrorist Organization. This designation, traditionally reserved for groups like the Islamic State or al-Qaeda, was controversial from the start.
The designation allowed the U.S. to take more aggressive action against what it characterized as a Venezuela-based threat. It became illegal for U.S. persons to knowingly provide material support or resources to the organization, and representatives and members were blocked from entering the United States.
Beginning in 2025, the United States initiated a military buildup in the Caribbean Sea and began striking boats it accused of trafficking drugs, killing more than 80 people according to reports. In the early hours of January 3, 2026, U.S. special forces carried out Operation Absolute Resolve, attacking Caracas and capturing Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores at a safe house in the capital.
The operation, which involved Delta Force commandos, resulted in Maduro and Flores being blindfolded, taken to the USS Iwo Jima warship, and flown to New York to face federal charges. Flores appeared in court with bandages on her temple and forehead; her lawyer stated she suffered significant injuries, including a possible rib fracture, during the abduction.
On January 3, 2026, a revised superseding indictment was unsealed in the Southern District of New York. This indictment made a significant change from the 2020 version: it abandoned the characterization of the Cartel de los Soles as a formal, hierarchical organization. Instead, prosecutors described it as a patronage system and culture of corruption within Venezuela’s military and political elite.
The revised indictment states that Maduro, like his predecessor Hugo Chávez, participated in and protected a patronage system in which powerful Venezuelan elites enriched themselves through drug trafficking and the protection of their partner drug traffickers. Where the original filing referred to the Cartel de los Soles more than 30 times and labeled Maduro as its leader, the new version mentions the term only twice.
Maduro faces four counts:
– Narco-terrorism conspiracy (partnering with designated foreign terrorist organizations)
– Conspiracy to import cocaine into the United States
– Possession of machine guns and destructive devices
– Conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices
Each charge carries a maximum sentence of life in prison. Cilia Flores faces three counts (excluding the narco-terrorism charge). Also charged are Diosdado Cabello, Ramón Rodríguez Chacín (former Interior Minister), Nicolás Maduro Guerra (Maduro’s son), and Héctor Guerrero Flores (Tren de Aragua leader).
Systematic protection of drug traffickers, use of official facilities and transportation for cocaine shipments, appointments of indicted officials to high positions, and the conviction of family members in major drug trafficking cases all point to deep institutional corruption at the highest levels of the Venezuelan government.
Whether characterized as a cartel, a patronage system, or a culture of corruption, the evidence suggests that Venezuela under both Chávez and Maduro transformed into what some analysts have termed a narco-state. The expulsion of the DEA, the strategic partnership with FARC, the documented cocaine seizures, the conviction of Flores’s nephews, and the sanctions against dozens of officials paint a picture of a government where drug trafficking became not just tolerated but systematically integrated into the power structure.
The volume of cocaine transiting Venezuela grew from approximately 50 tons in 2004 to an estimated 200-250 tons annually by 2020, representing a significant portion of the cocaine entering the United States. This transformation did not happen by accident but through deliberate policy choices, including the expulsion of U.S. anti-drug efforts, the provision of safe haven to Colombian traffickers, and the militarization of government institutions under leaders willing to profit from the drug trade.
The story of the Cartel de los Soles is ultimately the story of how a nation’s institutions can be captured and corrupted when those in power prioritize personal enrichment and political survival over the rule of law. Whether the recent U.S. military action proves justified or counterproductive remains to be seen, but the underlying crisis of corruption and criminality in Venezuela’s government is documented by years of evidence from multiple independent sources.
As Maduro and his wife now face trial in U.S. federal court, the legal proceedings may finally provide a fuller public accounting of how deeply drug trafficking penetrated Venezuela’s government and whether those at the very top directed, profited from, or merely tolerated the transformation of their country into a major cocaine transshipment hub.
By Peter Jensen, Washington, D.C.
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