A former director of Venezuelan military intelligence has pleaded guilty to drug trafficking and narcoterrorism charges in a United States federal court, according to the Justice Department, a week before his trial was set to begin.
Hugo Carvajal, who served in the country’s late President Hugo Chavez’s government from 2004 to 2011, pleaded guilty in a Manhattan federal court on Wednesday to four criminal counts including narcoterrorism conspiracy, conspiracy to import cocaine and weapons charges.
Federal prosecutors alleged the former major-general, along with other high-ranking Venezuelan government and military officials, led a drug cartel that attempted to “flood” the US with cocaine.
The cartel partnered with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a now demobilised armed group that the US once considered a “terrorist” organisation, to produce and distribute cocaine, prosecutors alleged.
In a letter this week to the defence counsel, prosecutors said they believe federal sentencing guidelines call for the 65-year-old to serve a mandatory minimum of 50 years in prison.
“The deeply troubling reality is that there are powerful foreign government officials who conspire to flood the United States with drugs that kill and debilitate,” Jay Clayton, the interim US lawyer in Manhattan, said in a statement.
‘El Pollo’
Nicknamed “El Pollo”, “the chicken” in Spanish, Carvajal took part in the failed 1992 coup that lifted Chavez to political prominence and is considered one of the most powerful figures of the socialist leader’s 1999-2013 rule.
Carvajal then served as a diplomat representing current Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s government before breaking with him to support the US-backed political opposition.
Carvajal was extradited to the US from Spain in July 2023 following a more than 10-year effort by the Justice Department to bring him to US soil.
Carvajal’s sentencing is scheduled for October.
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