“Acting President of Venezuela Delsey Rodriguez, whom US President Donald Trump called a “wonderful person” and a desirable partner after the kidnapping of Nicolas Maduro, has been under close surveillance by US intelligence services for years and is involved in a dozen criminal proceedings.”, — write: www.pravda.com.ua
Delsey Rodriguez. Photo: Getty Images Source: The Associated Press citing classified documents from the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and information from law enforcement sources
Details: According to journalists, Rodriguez appears in about a dozen DEA investigations, some of which remain active. The geography of these investigations spans offices from Paraguay and Ecuador to Phoenix and New York in the United States.
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In 2022, the US agency assigned Rodriguez the status of a “priority target”. The DEA uses this designation exclusively for suspects who, according to intelligence, have a “significant impact” on international drug trafficking and require the involvement of additional resources for development.
The documents show that U.S. intelligence agencies have amassed a detailed dossier on Rodriguez dating back to at least 2018. It lists her accomplices and charges ranging from drug trafficking to gold smuggling.
In particular, a confidential informant told the investigation that Rodriguez used hotels on the resort island of Margarita as a cover for money laundering. The island, located northeast of the mainland, has long been considered by the United States as a strategic hub for transporting drugs to the Caribbean and Europe.
Rodriguez is also linked to the corruption schemes of Alex Saab, a Colombian businessman and confidant of Maduro, who was arrested by the United States in 2020 for money laundering through government contracts.
Journalists note that the US government has never publicly charged Rodriguez. However, the existing investigations were conducted by the DEA’s elite special operations unit, the same body that prepared the evidence base for the arrest of Maduro himself.
“The current government of Venezuela is a criminal-hybrid regime. The only way to get into a position of power in the regime is to at least facilitate criminal activity. It’s not a flaw in the system. It’s the system,” said Steve Dudley, co-director of InSight Crime, an organized crime think tank.
What preceded:
- After the defiant arrest of Nicolás Maduro, Donald Trump publicly endorsed Delsey Rodriguez as a transitional figure capable of stabilizing Venezuela. He called her a “wonderful person”, ignoring the suspicions that had hung over her for years.
- Rodriguez, 56, was a loyal aide to Maduro and shared his anti-American rhetoric. Still, as secretary of state and later vice president, she tried to attract American investment during the first Trump administration. She hired lobbyists close to Trump and even ordered a state-owned oil company to donate $500,000 to his inaugural committee.