ALWAGHT- The US Justice Department has discreetly reduced its accusation of Nicolás Maduro, abandoning a central Trump-era claim that he led a drug trafficking organization.
The original 2020 indictment accused Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro of leading the so-called Cartel de los Soles, framing it as an organized cocaine-trafficking network. The allegation became a cornerstone of Washington’s pressure campaign, used to justify sweeping sanctions and escalating military action against Venezuela.
In 2025, the US Treasury formally designated the group a terrorist organization, a move endorsed by senior Trump-era officials. However, crime and narcotics experts have long argued that the “Cartel de los Soles” is not a real cartel, but a decades-old media term describing alleged corruption among individual Venezuelan military figures rather than a structured criminal entity.
That distinction now appears in a revised indictment released after US forces kidnapped Maduro and transported him to New York. While prosecutors still allege drug-trafficking conspiracy, they dropped claims that the cartel exists as a formal organization, redefining it instead as a patronage system or culture of corruption. References to the cartel were reduced from 32 to just two.
The revisions have fueled criticism of earlier US designations and raised questions about the political use of unproven allegations. Despite the shift, some US officials continue to describe the cartel as real, even as major international drug reports have never recognized it. Maduro has pleaded not guilty, calling himself a prisoner of war and accusing Washington of using drug claims to justify regime change and control of Venezuela’s oil resources.
