Free Republic

VENEZUELAN tyrant Nicolas Maduro is not merely complicit in organised crime — he leads it. From generals to judges, the very top of Venezuela’s political and military elite are deeply embedded in a powerful, sprawling cocaine trafficking network, experts say. Cartel de los Soles, translated as Cartel of The Suns, isn’t a cartel in the traditional sense. It’s a web of Venezuelan military, intelligence and political elites accused of taxing, protecting and moving cocaine with state resources. With parts of Maduro’s government deeply enmeshed in the drug trade, the lines between state power and organised crime have been blurred. Dr...

January 21, 2022 With inflation at a record high, millions of its citizens fleeing the country, and a political opposition recognized by most Western democracies as the legitimate government of Venezuela, the regime of Nicolás Maduro seemed to be on the brink of collapse in 2019. But Maduro regime survived, thanks to a number of factors — among them the external support it received from malign state actors such as Russia and China. Moscow and Beijing never wavered in their political support of the Venezuelan regime, or of Maduro himself, including by refusing to recognize the constitutionally mandated interim presidency...