Socialist dictator of Venezuela Nicolás Maduro on Monday refuted the existence of the Cartel of the Suns, which he stands accused of leading, and condemned the United States’ drug-fighting efforts in an interview with the Russian state outlet RT.
Maduro, who said that the extensively documented cartel is part of a “Hollywood tale” against his regime, claimed instead that the “real” cartel is the “Cartel of the North,” a purported clandestine drug-trafficking organization linked to the U.S. financial system.
The Venezuelan dictator was interviewed for RT by one of his regime’s longtime allies, Rafael Correa, socialist former president of Ecuador and a fugitive convicted felon. Correa, who lives in Belgium and is actively avoiding an in-absentia corruption conviction in his home country, travelled to Caracas to interview Maduro as part of his show on RT called Conversando con Correa (“Speaking with Correa”).
Both Correa and Maduro have long enjoyed close ties to the Russian government. Venezuela has become, under the Maduro regime, Russia’s closest and most useful strategic ally in the Western Hemisphere, offering a base for Russian military activities and espionage.
Asked by Correa if the Cartel of the Suns exists, Maduro responded that a “Cartel of the North” allegedly exists in the United States and directs “all the drug trafficking in South America and the world.”
“There is the Cartel of the North, which is clandestine. 85 percent of the billions of dollars generated by international drug trafficking each year are held in U.S. banks,” Maduro claimed. “That’s where the cartel is, so let them investigate and uncover it.”
“Money laundering? Look, I was looking at the data provided by the vice president, and I believe that more than $500 billion a year is held in U.S. banks, in legal banks,” he continued, citing accusations made earlier that day by his Vice President Delcy Rodríguez who claimed, without evidence, that the United States “pockets 85 percent of drug trafficking profits.”
Maduro said that if the United States wants to investigate a drug cartel then they should investigate the purported “Cartel of the North” because, according to him, “that’s where all the drug trafficking in South America and the world is directed from the United States, because they also direct the trafficking of opium, etc., etc.”
“It is in the United States that the mafias are located,” he claimed.
Maduro once again condemned the United States’ ongoing military deployment in Caribbean international waters as part of President Donald Trump’s efforts to combat drug cartels operating in the area seeking to curb the flow of drugs entering America.
The socialist dictator repeated his accusation that the deployment is part of a purported U.S. plan to “invade” Venezuela and oust him from power, a claim he and several members of his regime have repeated over the past weeks without presenting evidence. According to Maduro, the United States wants to oust him to take control of Venezuela’s natural resources — an accusation that the Venezuelan regime has espoused for decades.
Maduro told Correa that the United States’ drug-trafficking accusations against him are part of a “Hollywood tale” in which “Maduro is the villain of the movie and they’re the good ones.”
“And then they’ll send their army. The good guys in the movie, blond, strong, come looking for the Latino, the bad guy. But the truth of the movie, the people know it,” Maduro said. “That the bad guy isn’t who they say he is. That the bad guy is the one who writes the movie, the one who makes the movie over there. Those are the real bad guys.”
Last week, Maduro threatened the United States with an “armed struggle” should Venezuela be attacked. Maduro claimed during his interview with Correa that Governor of Puerto Rico Jenniffer González-Colón has now joined the purported plot against his regime — an accusation that comes months after Maduro himself threatened to invade Puerto Rico.
“That’s what’s coming, dealing with this Hollywood story, trying to smear the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, its leadership, its president, and by smearing it, attempting an operation to attack us,” Maduro told Correa. “Well, we have eight destroyer warships in the Caribbean. We’ve never seen that before. The only thing that comes to mind is the October 1962 crisis when they blockaded Cuba.”
“Well, they have eight ships now, 1,200 missiles aimed at our heads, they have a nuclear submarine, and now they say they have Puerto Rico, that the head of the Pentagon arrived in Puerto Rico and the governor of Puerto Rico said that Puerto Rico was the base for a military operation against Venezuela,” he continued. “She said it, the governor of Puerto Rico is joining a military plan.”
Nicolás Maduro, who succeeded his predecessor Hugo Chávez as dictator of Venezuela in 2013, is actively wanted by U.S. authorities on multiple narcoterrorism charges and stands accused of being a leading figure, if not the leader of, the Cartel of the Suns, an international cocaine trafficking operation identified by the U.S. Department of the Treasury as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT). The Cartel, whose name is a direct reference to the sun-shaped insignias worn by Venezuelan military generals, is led by top members of the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) and high-ranking Venezuelan military officials.
In August, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi announced that the United States doubled its bounty on information that can lead to Maduro’s arrest from $25 to $50 million. Other members of the Maduro regime, such as Interior Minister and long suspected drug lord Diosdado Cabello and Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López, are also actively wanted by the United States and accused of leading the Venezuelan drug cartel alongside Maduro.
“Maduro is indicted by a grand jury in the Southern District of New York. That means the Southern District of New York presented the evidence to a grand jury, and a grand jury indicted him. And then a superseding indictment came out that was unsealed about a year and a half ago that specifically detailed Maduro’s actions,” U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said last week.
“So number one — let there be no doubt — he, Nicolás Maduro, is an indicted drug trafficker in the United States, and he’s a fugitive of American justice,” Rubio continued.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
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