Newly minted Venezuelan President Delcy Rodriguez has reportedly been in the DEA’s crosshairs for years — a “priority target” for playing a major role in the South American drug trade.
Rodriguez was catapulted to power after deposed dictator Nicolas Maduro was captured in a daring US raid this month. Rodriguez met Thursday with CIA director John Ratcliffe in Caracas.
The DEA’s file on Rodriguez accuses her of being involved in a swath of criminal activities from drug trafficking to gold smuggling. She appears in nearly a dozen DEA probes, conducted by agents around the globe — some of which remain ongoing.
Documents show that the DEA’s elite Special Operations Division has been tracking the Venezuelan pol since at least 2018. She was classified as a “priority target” due to her “significant impact” on the drug trade in 2022, according to the Associated Press.
The files allege Maduro’s vice president has been accused by an informant of using hotels in the Isla Margarita Resort in the Caribbean as a “front to launder money,” according to the report.
Rodriguez is also the subject of an ongoing investigation regarding government contracts awarded to Maduro’s alleged bagman Alex Saab.
Saab was arrested in 2020 on money laundering charges and accused of funneling $350 million into the US. He was pardoned by President Biden in 2023 as part of a prisoner exchange.
The agency has also investigated Rodriguez for possible government corruption involving her long-time boyfriend, Yussef Nassif, and his brother Omar Nassif-Sruji.
Hong Kong companies registered under the brothers’ names received $650 million from the government of Venezuela in 2021 to provide food and medicine, according to armando.info.
While Rodriguez continues to work closely with the Trump administration as she clings to power, Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado has blasted Rodriguez as a “communist” and ally of regimes hostile to America.
“Delcy Rodriguez, yes, she’s a Communist. She’s the main ally and representation of the Russian regime, the Chinese and Iranians. But that’s not the Venezuelan people,” Machado said.
Machado, who was in Washington on Thursday, presented her Nobel Peace Prize to Trump, saying he “deserves it.”
The exiled opposition leader vowed to soon return to her home country as the first democratically-elected female president of Venezuela.
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