Venezuela’s socialist regime released a five-page statement on Tuesday rejecting President Donald Trump’s determination designating Venezuela and other countries as failing to cooperate in efforts to fight drug trafficking.
According to the Venezuelan regime, which claimed throughout the text that other countries such as Colombia and Peru are responsible for the drug trafficking in the region, all of the statements contained in the “imaginary and illegitimate self-designation” are “unfounded and contradict official data from specialized international organizations.”
The U.S. Department of State announced on Monday that President Trump submitted a Presidential determination to Congress designating Afghanistan, Bolivia, Burma, Colombia, and Venezuela as “having failed demonstrably during the previous 12 months” to adhere to their obligations under international counternarcotics agreements and to take the efforts required by the 1961 Foreign Assistance Act to fight drug trafficking.
The determination cites socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro’s multiple indictments on narco-terrorism charges and his ongoing leading role in the Cartel of the Suns, an international cocaine trafficking operation run through the Venezuelan military. Presently, the United States is offering $50 million for information that can lead to Maduro’s arrest and/or conviction.
“In Venezuela, the criminal regime of indicted drug trafficker Nicolás Maduro leads one of the largest cocaine trafficking networks in the world, and the United States will continue to seek to bring Maduro and other members of his complicit regime to justice for their crimes,” the determination read. “We will also target Venezuelan foreign terrorist organizations such as Tren de Aragua and purge them from our country.”
The State Department published the determination hours after President Trump announced that U.S. military forces conducted a “kinetic strike” against “positively identified, extraordinarily violent drug trafficking cartels and narcoterrorists in the SOUTHCOM area of responsibility.” Trump detailed in a Truth Social post that the strike occurred “while these confirmed narcoterrorists from Venezuela were in International Waters transporting illegal narcotics” headed to the United States, killing three men on board the vessel.
This week’s military operation comes days after another Venezuelan drug-laden vessel was struck in international waters as part of President Trump’s ongoing efforts to combat Latin American drug cartels in Caribbean international waters and curb the flow of drugs entering the United States. The strike against the first vessel resulted in the death of 11 members of the Tren de Aragua terrorist organization. Maduro, and members of his regime, have repeatedly insisted over the past weeks that the footage of the first strike is “fake.”
President Trump revealed in remarks to reporters on Tuesday that a third boat was also struck, “but you saw two,” and called upon Maduro to stop sending members of the Tren de Aragua terrorist organization and drugs into the United States.
The Presidential declaration appears to have greatly infuriated the rogue Venezuelan socialist regime, which responded to it in a five-page statement issued by its Foreign Ministry and published by Foreign Minister Yván Gil on his official Telegram account “rejecting and repudiating” its contents “like the entire international community and the dignified countries of Latin America.”
According to the Maduro regime, the Determination is “unfounded” and contradicts official data from international organizations — a claim that the Venezuelan regime justified citing reports from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), in which “Venezuela is certified as a territory free of illicit crops.”
“Furthermore, it has been duly proven that there are no drug cartels or plantations for drug processing in our country,” the statement read. “This information is reflected in the reports of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) (2024-2025), which do not identify Venezuela as a producer, distributor, or transit country for drugs.”
“Venezuela is not a producer, trafficker, cultivator, or storage center for drugs. In conclusion, according to all reports from specialized agencies in this field, our country is not a significant player in this area,” the statement continued.
The Maduro regime continued by asserting that the cited reports “reaffirm” that cocaine production fundamentally occurs in Colombia, “where the drug trafficking economy has been consolidated over the years under the protection of various governments allied with the United States.” The Venezuelan regime pointed at Peru, claiming that drug production has been increasing since the arrival of “illegitimate” governments following the “coup” against communist former President Pedro Castillo. Castillo was arrested in 2022 after he attempted to dissolve the nation’s Congress and rule by decree.
The Maduro regime claimed in the statement that its “drug trafficking fighting program” has managed to capture “at least 70 percent” of the drugs passing through Venezuelan territory. Citing UNODC reports, it said that drug trafficking money laundered in the U.S. amounts to 2.7 percent of its GDP, pointing at banks with U.S. presence such as HSBC and Wells Fargo for “admitting their involvement in laundering money from drug trafficking.”
Accusing Venezuela of participating in drug trafficking, it continued, was “an embarrassing lie.”
“This great propaganda farce, in the worst Hollywood style, is now compounded by a new element: the threat of military aggression against Venezuela, exploiting an issue that should be dealt with exclusively through international and multilateral security, judicial, and police cooperation mechanisms,” the statement continued.
The Maduro regime has repeatedly insisted over the past weeks, without evidence, that the United States’ ongoing military deployment in Caribbean international waters to fight drug cartels and drug trafficking in the region is part of a purported plan to “invade” Venezuela and oust Maduro from power.
In late August, the Maduro regime formally called upon U.S. Secretary-General António Guterres to intercede and help “stop” the United States’ ongoing drug-fighting efforts in the Caribbean under grounds that the military actions are a “threat” to the ruling socialists.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
Read the full article here