By José DeCórdoba and Juan Forero
U.S. prosecutors are investigating several high-ranking
Venezuelan officials, including the president of the country's
congress, on suspicion that they have turned the country into a
global hub for cocaine trafficking and money laundering, according
to more than a dozen people familiar with the probes.
An elite unit of the Drug Enforcement Administration in
Washington and federal prosecutors in New York and Miami are
building cases using evidence provided by former cocaine
traffickers, informants who were once close to top Venezuelan
officials and defectors from the Venezuelan military, these people
say.
A leading target, according to a Justice Department official and
other American authorities, is National Assembly President Diosdado
Cabello, considered the country's second most-powerful man.
"There is extensive evidence to justify that he is one of the
heads, if not the head, of the cartel," said the Justice Department
official, speaking of a group of military officers and top
officials suspected of being involved in the drug trade. "He
certainly is a main target."
Representatives of Mr. Cabello and other officials didn't return
phone calls and emails requesting comment. In the past, Venezuelan
authorities have rejected allegations of high-ranking involvement
in the drug trade as an attempt by the U.S. to destabilize the
leftist government in Caracas.
In an appearance on state television Wednesday, Mr. Cabello said
he solicited a court-ordered travel ban on 22 executives and
journalists from three Venezuelan news outlets that he has sued for
publishing stories about the drug allegations earlier this year.
"They accuse me of being a drug trafficker without a single piece
of evidence and now I'm the bad guy," Mr. Cabello said. "I feel
offended, and none of them even said they're sorry."
The Obama administration isn't directing or coordinating the
investigations, which are being run by federal prosecutors who have
wide leeway to target criminal suspects. But if the probes result
in publicly disclosed indictments of Mr. Cabello and others, the
resulting furor in Venezuela would likely plunge relations between
the two countries into their most serious crisis since the late
populist Hugo Chávez took office 16 years ago.
"It would be seismic," said a U.S. official, of the expected
Venezuelan reaction. "They will blame a vast right-wing
conspiracy."
U.S. authorities say they are far along in their investigations.
But they say any indictments that may result might be sealed,
making them secret until authorities can make arrests--something
that would be difficult if not impossible unless the suspects
travel abroad.
The investigations are a response to an explosion in drug
trafficking in the oil-rich country, U.S. officials say. Under
pressure in Colombia, where authorities aggressively battled the
drug trade with $10 billion in U.S. aid since 2000, many Colombian
traffickers moved operations to neighboring Venezuela, where U.S.
law-enforcement officials say they found a government and military
eager to permit and ultimately control cocaine smuggling through
the country.
"Most of the high-end traffickers moved to Venezuela in that
time," said Joaquín Pérez, a Miami attorney who represents key
Colombian traffickers who have acknowledged operating out of
Venezuela.
Venezuela doesn't produce coca, the leaf used to make cocaine,
nor does it manufacture the drug. But the U.S. estimates that
nearly a third of the cocaine produced in other Andean countries,
about 275 tons, now moves through Venezuela annually.
Prosecutors aren't targeting President Nicolás Maduro, who has
been in power since Mr. Chávez's death two years ago. U.S.
law-enforcement officials say they view several other Venezuelan
officials and military officers as the de facto leaders of
drug-trafficking organizations that use Venezuela as a launchpad
for cocaine shipments to the U.S. as well as Europe.
'A Criminal Organization'
"It is a criminal organization," said the Justice Department
official, referring to certain members of the upper echelons of the
Venezuelan government and military.
Mildred Camero, who had been Mr. Chávez's drug czar until being
forced out abruptly in 2005, said Venezuela has "a government of
narcotraffickers and money launderers." She recently collaborated
on a book, "Chavismo, Narcotrafficking and Militarism," in which
she alleged that drug-related corruption had penetrated the state,
naming more than a dozen officials, including nine generals, who
allegedly worked with smugglers.
Law-enforcement officials in the U.S. said that they have
accelerated their investigations in the past two years, a period
that has seen Venezuela's economy worsen dramatically. Rampant
crime has spiked, making Venezuela the continent's most violent
country and spurring people to emigrate.
The deepening crisis has made it easier for U.S. authorities to
recruit informants, say those working to enlist people close to top
Venezuelan officials. Colombian and Venezuelan drug traffickers
have also arrived in the U.S., eager to provide information on
Venezuelan officials in exchange for sentencing leniency and
residency, U.S. officials say.
"Since the turmoil in Venezuela, we've had greater success in
building these cases," said a federal prosecutor from New York's
Eastern District who works on Venezuelan cases.
In January, U.S. investigators made a major catch when naval
captain Leamsy Salazar defected and was brought to Washington. Mr.
Salazar, who has said he headed Mr. Cabello's security detail, told
U.S. authorities that he witnessed Mr. Cabello supervise the launch
of a large shipment of cocaine from Venezuela's Paraguaná
peninsula, people familiar with the case say.
Mr. Cabello has publicly railed against his former bodyguard,
saying he didn't head his security detail and calling him "an
infiltrator" who has no proof of his involvement in drug
trafficking. "Our conscience is totally clear," he said in a radio
interview.
Rafael Isea is another defector who has been talking to
investigators, people familiar with the matter say. A former
Venezuelan deputy finance minister and governor of Aragua state,
Mr. Isea fled Venezuela in 2013. People familiar with the case say
Mr. Isea has told investigators that Walid Makled, a drug kingpin
now in prison, paid off former Interior Minister Tarek El Aissami
to get drug shipments through Venezuela.
Almost a year after leaving the country, Mr. Isea was accused of
committing "financial irregularities" during his days as governor
by Venezuela's attorney general, and by Mr. El Aissami, who
succeeded him as governor of Aragua.
"Today, Rafael Isea, that bandit and traitor, is a refugee in
Washington where he has entered a program for protected witnesses
in exchange for worthless information against Venezuela," Mr. El
Aissami said recently on Venezuelan television.
Mr. Isea has rejected the accusations as false, politically
motivated and meant to discredit him.
In addition to Mr. El Aissami, other powerful officials under
investigation include Hugo Carvajal, a former director of military
intelligence; Nestor Reverol, the head of the National Guard; Jose
David Cabello, Mr. Cabello's brother, who is the industry minister
and heads the country's tax collection agency; and Gen. Luis Motta
Dominguez, a National Guard general in charge of central Venezuela,
say a half-dozen officials and people familiar with the
investigations.
Calls and emails seeking comment from several government
ministries as well as the president's office went unanswered. Some
officials have taken to social media to ridicule the U.S.
investigations. A Twitter account in the name of Gen. Motta
Dominguez earlier this year said: "We all know that whoever wants
his green card and live in the US to visit Disney can just pick his
leader and accuse him of being a narco. DEA tours will attend to
them."
Recruiting Defectors
To build cases, U.S. law-enforcement officials work with
Venezuelan exiles and others to locate and recruit disaffected
Venezuelans.
"We get people out of Venezuela, and we meet with them in
Panama, Curaçao, Bogotá," said a former intelligence operative who
works with U.S. officials to recruit and debrief Venezuelans who
have evidence of links between Venezuelan officials and the drug
trade.
Former Venezuelan military officers and others living outside
the country provide help by contacting their former comrades and
urging them to defect, the recruiter said. If the defector can
provide useful information, the recruiter said, he is flown to the
U.S. and a new life.
"What does the U.S. want?" said the recruiter, who has been
working Venezuelan cases since 2008. "The U.S. wants proof,
evidence of relations between politicians, military officers and
functionaries with drug traffickers and terrorist groups."
Recently, at Washington's posh Capital Grille restaurant, a few
blocks from Congress, a Venezuelan operative working with a U.S.
law enforcement agency took a call from a middleman for a
high-level official in Caracas seeking to trade information for
favorable treatment from the U.S.
"Tell him I'll meet him in Panama next week," said the
operative, interrupting a lunch of oysters and steak.
The biggest target is 52-year-old Mr. Cabello, a former army
lieutenant who forged a close link in the military academy with Mr.
Chávez when the two played on the same baseball team. When Mr.
Chávez launched an unsuccessful 1992 coup, Mr. Cabello led a
four-tank column that attacked the presidential palace in downtown
Caracas.
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Mr. Cabello has been minister of public works and housing, which
also gave him control of the airports and ports, as well as
minister of the interior and vice president. He was also president
for a few hours in April 2002 when Mr. Chávez was briefly ousted in
a failed coup.
Many analysts and politicians in Venezuela say they believe Mr.
Cabello's power rivals that of Mr. Maduro and is rooted in his
influence among Venezuela's generals.
Julio Rodriguez, a retired colonel who knows Mr. Cabello from
their days at Venezuela's military academy, says that of 96
lieutenant colonels commanding battalions in Venezuela today, Mr.
Cabello has close ties to 46.
The stocky and bull-necked Mr. Cabello, who often sports the
standard Chavista uniform of red shirt and tri-color windbreaker in
the red, yellow and blue of the Venezuelan flag, is host of a
television program, "Hitting With the Sledge Hammer," on state
television, in which he uses telephone intercepts of opponents to
attack and embarrass them. Mr. Rodriguez said he believes Mr.
Cabello will never make any kind of a deal with the U.S. "Diosdado
is a kamikaze," he said. "He will never surrender."
U.S. investigators have painstakingly built cases against
Venezuelan officials by using information gathered from criminal
cases brought in the U.S. In Miami, people familiar with the matter
say a key building block in the investigations involved a
drug-smuggling ring run by Roberto Mendez Hurtado. A Colombian, Mr.
Mendez Hurtado moved cocaine into Apure state in western Venezuela
and, according to those familiar with his case, had met with
high-ranking Venezuelan officials. The cocaine was then taken by
boat or flown directly to islands in the Caribbean before reaching
American shores.
Mr. Mendez Hurtado pleaded guilty in Miami federal court and
received a 19-year prison term in 2014. People close to that
investigation say that Mr. Mendez Hurtado and his fellow
traffickers wouldn't have been able to operate without paying off a
string of top military officers and government officials.
"The involvement of top officials in the National Guard and in
the government of Venezuela in drug trafficking is very clear,"
said a former Venezuelan National Guard officer who served in
intelligence and in anti-narcotics and left the country last year
frightened by the overwhelming corruption he saw daily.
"Everyone feels pressured," he said. "Sooner or later everyone
surrenders to drug trafficking."
In another case, in Brooklyn, prosecutors have learned about the
intricacies of the drug trade in Venezuela after breaking up a
cocaine-smuggling ring led by Luis Frank Tello, who pleaded guilty,
court documents show. The cocaine was brought in across the border
from Colombia and, with the help of National Guard officers,
shipped north, sometimes from the airport in Venezuela's
second-largest city, Maracaibo.
The U.S. investigations of Venezuelan officials have been going
on for years, though investigators have sometimes been thwarted by
politics.
In 2008, the U.S. Treasury Department put three top aides to
then-President Chávez on a blacklist and froze any assets they
might have in the U.S. Among the three was Mr. Carvajal, known as
"El Pollo," or the Chicken, then the head of military intelligence.
The U.S. acted after extensive evidence surfaced earlier that year
in the computers of a dead Colombian guerrilla commander of
burgeoning cocaine-for-arms exchanges between the rebels and top
Venezuelan generals and officials, according to the U.S. and
Colombian governments.
In 2010, Manhattan prosecutors unsealed the indictment of Mr.
Makled, the Venezuelan drug dealer accused of shipping tons of
cocaine to the U.S. through the country's main seaport of Puerto
Cabello, which he allegedly controlled. Mr. Makled, who had been
captured in Colombia, boasted of having 40 Venezuelan generals on
his payroll.
"All my business associates are generals," Mr. Makled said then
to an associate in correspondence seen by The Wall Street Journal.
"I'm telling you we dispatched 300,000 kilos of coke. I couldn't
have done it without the top of the government."
DEA agents interviewed Mr. Makled in a Colombian prison as they
prepared to extradite him to New York. But instead, Colombia
extradited him in 2011 to Venezuela, where he was convicted of drug
trafficking. This February, he was sentenced to 14 years and six
months in jail.
Last July, American counter-drug officials nearly nabbed Mr.
Carvajal, who had been indicted in Miami and New York on drug
charges and detained in Aruba at the American government's behest.
But Dutch authorities released him to Venezuela, arguing that he
had diplomatic immunity.
Upon Mr. Carvajal's release, President Maduro praised the former
intelligence chief as a dedicated anti-drug fighter who had set a
worlds' record capturing drug capos.
The U.S. is also gathering information from bankers and
financiers who handle the money for top Venezuelan officials. Since
last year, people familiar with the matter say the U.S. government
has revoked the visas of at least 56 Venezuelans, including bankers
and financiers whose identities haven't been made public. Some have
sought to cooperate with investigators in order to regain access to
the U.S.
"They are flipping all these money brokers," said a lawyer who
is representing two Venezuelan financiers who have had their visas
revoked. "The information is coming in very rapidly."
Christopher M. Matthews in New York contributed to this
article.
Write to José DeCórdoba at jose.decordoba@wsj.com and Juan
Forero at Juan.Forero@wsj.com
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