Venezuela has become a strategic hub for organized crime. The Venezuelan government, especially during the administration of former President Nicolás Maduro (2013-2026), has established a collaborative governance system with Venezuelan and Colombian criminal groups, granting them state approval to carry out criminal activities with impunity. Criminal organizations that do not receive government backing have been targeted and dismantled. Networks made up of military personnel and government officials are involved in drug trafficking operations that move narcotics from Colombia to international markets, while other criminal groups and military factions control illegal gold mining in the south of the country and oversee part of its commercial distribution.
Our Latest on Venezuela
We continue to monitor the evolving situation in Venezuela following the arrest of Nicolás Maduro. We are closely observing the regional implications of the ongoing US military buildup, as well as how local power dynamics and criminal structures are adapting to these shifts, including inside the so-called Cartel of the Suns.
The massive exodus of Venezuelans to countries across the region allowed Tren de Aragua—a prison gang that operated under the protection of Maduro’s government—to grow and expand across the Americas, exploiting the routes and needs of the Venezuelan diaspora. At the same time, Colombian guerrilla groups like the National Liberation Army (Ejército de Liberación Nacional – ELN) took on a binational character after years of consolidating control in Venezuela’s border regions, working in collusion with political and military actors. The complex humanitarian emergency faced by Venezuela’s population has made migrants vulnerable to human trafficking networks. Inside the country, widespread extortion by criminal gangs has affected entire communities. Nevertheless, Venezuela’s homicide rate has decreased significantly in recent years.
Geography
Venezuela shares a nearly 2,200-kilometer border with Colombia, where strategic corridors for drug trafficking, migrant smuggling, and criminal refuge converge. The Orinoco River, which connects Colombia and runs through Venezuela to the Atlantic Ocean, serves as a key route for various illegal economies.
Venezuela’s strategic location in northern South America, coupled with its extensive Caribbean coastline, makes it a platform for shipping narcotics, weapons, and other illicit goods to the Caribbean, Africa, and Europe.
The country’s southern region overlaps with the Amazon, where illegal mining intersects with other illicit activities and smuggling routes into Brazil. To the east, the border with Guyana is the subject of a territorial dispute over the oil- and mineral-rich Essequibo region, an area that is routinely exploited by criminal organizations engaged in wildlife trafficking, illegal logging, and unregulated mining.
History
Venezuela’s coasts have historically attracted organized crime, serving as routes for smuggling alcohol, tobacco, precious metals, and other illicit goods. During the 20th century, the country’s dictatorships contributed to rising inequality, which in turn fueled the emergence of violent guerrilla movements in the 1960s. These groups later disbanded and disarmed following peace deals with the government.
Italian Cosa Nostra clans were among the first foreign organized crime groups to establish a presence in Venezuela, taking advantage of post-World War II migration. In the 1980s and 1990s, members of the Cuntrera and Caruana families found lucrative opportunities trafficking cocaine and heroin from Colombia to Europe. As Colombian drug shipments came under increasing scrutiny, Venezuela emerged as an alternative route. This, combined with the mass migration of Colombians fleeing armed conflict and Venezuela’s economic downturn, accelerated the expansion of the drug trade and allowed criminal groups to entrench themselves in the country.
Both active and retired members of Venezuela’s security forces have historically participated in drug trafficking. Multiple high-ranking officers were arrested in the 1980s with cocaine shipments bound for Florida, exposing long-standing state involvement. Prominent political and even religious figures were also implicated in cocaine trafficking cases during this period. Over time, drug trafficking in Venezuela evolved into a systemic phenomenon that fueled the corruption networks that would later form the Cartel of the Suns (Cartel de los Soles), a web of military officers profiting from drug smuggling.
Under the presidency of Hugo Chávez, who took office in 1999, drug trafficking groups further consolidated their operations in Venezuela. The rupture in relations with US law enforcement agencies, including the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), ended years of international anti-narcotics cooperation, despite previous corruption scandals. Simultaneously, elements of the National Guard and army shifted from accepting bribes to directly handling drug storage and transport. Drug trafficker Walid Makled, who was arrested in Colombia in 2010 and extradited to Venezuela, claimed that top officials in Chávez’s government were involved in drug trafficking.
By the late 2010s, international agencies warned that increasing volumes of cocaine were moving through Venezuela. One case that elevated Venezuela’s profile as a drug transit country was the 2013 seizure of 1.4 tons of cocaine on an Air France flight departing from the nation’s main airport.
In the 2000s, Colombia’s military offensives against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia – FARC) and the National Liberation Army (Ejército de Liberación Nacional – ELN) pushed these guerrilla groups into Venezuela’s border states like Apure, Zulia, and Táchira, where they also engaged in other criminal activities like kidnapping. Chávez viewed Colombia’s rebels as ideological allies, famously stating that the FARC were “not the enemy” of Venezuela. While cracking down on right-wing paramilitaries in western Venezuela, the government provided guerrilla fighters with safe-conducts, weapons, and munitions from official arsenals.
Both Chávez and Nicolás Maduro, who took office in 2013 after Chávez’s death, made decisions that compromised national security and laid the groundwork for organized crime to flourish. One of the most consequential policies was granting resources and autonomy to criminal groups. This allowed prison gangs to take control of facilities and turn them into crime strongholds. It also empowered the colectivos, government-aligned paramilitary groups created under Chávez that have served as a loyal enforcement arm for the regime.
The severe politicization of the security forces and judiciary, the lack of anti-corruption efforts, and Venezuela’s economic crisis — exacerbated by plummeting oil prices — fueled a surge in street crime and violence, making Venezuela one of the most violent countries in the world by 2015, with a homicide rate of 90 per 100,000 inhabitants.
Dire economic, health, food, and security conditions, along with increased repression and antidemocratic actions under Maduro, triggered mass migration. By the end of 2024, international organizations reported approximately 7.8 million Venezuelan migrants and refugees worldwide. This displacement also facilitated the spread of Venezuelan organized crime abroad, with gangs exploiting human smuggling routes along migration corridors.
To consolidate territorial control and suppress rival criminal actors, Maduro’s administration struck deals with select criminal groups to manage violence. These groups have assumed increasingly para-state roles, coordinating with state officials in a strategy that has resulted in what InSight Crime calls a “hybrid state” — a symbiosis between political power and organized crime. The ELN and the Second Marquetalia have strengthened their binational operations through close collaboration with the Venezuelan state. This alliance became especially apparent when the ELN supported Venezuela’s military during armed clashes with the ex-FARC mafia’s 10th Front in Apure at the end of 2021.
While illegal mining has long been present in Venezuela’s mineral-rich southern states, particularly the Amazon region, its institutionalization began in February 2016 with the creation of the Orinoco Mining Arc (Arco Minero del Orinoco – AMO). The 111,844 km² zone hosts multiple armed groups that operate with the support of security forces and local and national authorities, without environmental oversight and amid ongoing human rights abuses.
In the early 2020s, the government stepped up its control by dismantling criminal groups not aligned with its interests. At the same time, it began regulating lucrative illegal economies like drug trafficking and illegal mining by forging strategic alliances with criminal actors in key areas. The granting of gold mines in the AMO to military officers and governors is among the clearest examples of this systematization of hybrid economies.
These dynamics — combined with the shrinking domestic criminal market due to mass migration and the outward movement of gangs — led to a reduction in crime rates in Venezuela. However, rampant institutional corruption remains a major issue. Government-aligned political actors have weaponized corruption to bolster their criminal enterprises. One such figure is Omar Prieto, the former governor of Zulia state, who, as documented by InSight Crime, used corruption to advance his criminal interests.
Maduro cemented Venezuela’s status as a criminal regime by committing fraud during the 2024 presidential elections, in which the opposition clearly won the vote.
The regional expansion of Venezuelan organized crime, led by the Tren de Aragua, has raised alarm across the Americas, particularly given the group’s presence in several South American countries, including Colombia, Peru, and Chile. In the United States, reports and warnings have suggested the group’s presence in multiple states, though no solid evidence has emerged to confirm operational activity.
In 2025, the US government under Donald Trump escalated accusations against Maduro over drug trafficking and launched a series of attacks in the Caribbean against vessels allegedly involved in the drug trade, some of which departed from Venezuela.
Venezuela was shaken in early January 2026, when a US operation bombed several locations in Caracas and surrounding areas, and a team of US military personnel in the capital detained then-President Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. The couple was transported to New York, where they face drug trafficking charges and other crimes.
In the Venezuelan capital, Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, assumed the interim presidency. At the same time, the same military and government leadership loyal to Maduro remained in power, keeping the corrupt and criminal system in place without substantially altering the country’s criminal dynamics. The Trump administration said in the wake of the controversial operation that the US government was working closely with Chavista officials, under apparent agreements that would benefit the United States through access to Venezuelan oil.
Criminal Groups
The criminal landscape in Venezuela has evolved in line with the interests of Nicolás Maduro’s authoritarian regime, which, in order to maintain political and territorial control, consolidated what is known as a “hybrid state.” In this context, elements of the state have merged with criminal actors to facilitate access to criminal economies. Groups that are not aligned with the regime or are seen as rivals have, in turn, been subjected to intense persecution by the state apparatus.
Tren de Aragua stands out as Venezuela’s most notorious criminal group. The gang began its operations and consolidated its power behind the walls of Tocorón prison, in Aragua state, its main base of operations. Taking advantage of the wave of migration from Venezuela, some of its members moved abroad and expanded their criminal activities into Colombia, Chile, and Peru. The state intervention at Tocorón in 2023 marked the end of the impunity and state cooperation the gang had long enjoyed in Venezuela. Even so, the group has maintained a presence in the countries where it managed to extend its reach.
Other megabandas — the term used for Venezuelan criminal gangs with large numbers of members — have also loomed large in the country’s underworld, though few continue to operate today. One is Tren del Llano, which has been particularly resilient, surviving the deaths of its leaders, internal fragmentation, and intense security operations such as Operation Thunder, which was marred by allegations of human rights abuses. Other groups — including the megabanda led by Carlos Luis Revete, alias “El Koki,” in Caracas’ Cota 905; that of Deiber Johan González, alias “Carlos Capa,” in Miranda state; and that of Wilexis Acevedo, alias “Wilexis,” in Petare, Caracas — have not fared as well. State operations killed their leaders in 2020 and dismantled much of what remained of their organizations.
Colombia’s two major guerrilla groups have established a presence in Venezuela for decades, particularly in states along the Colombian border. The ELN has consolidated itself as the main criminal actor along the Venezuela–Colombia border, with a presence in 19 of the 20 municipalities in the area. Drug shipments, smuggled goods, and migrant families move through these corridors daily. At the same time, some factions of dissidents from the now-defunct FARC, such as the 33rd and 10th Fronts, have been targeted by the Venezuelan government, to the benefit of its ally, the ELN.
Several drug trafficking organizations have operated in the country for decades, including the Paraguaná Cartel and the Guajira Cartel. Corrupt members of the armed forces and government officials are directly involved in the drug trade through what is known as the Cartel of the Suns, which operates as a “network of networks,” a porous and fluid structure of cells dedicated to drug trafficking within Venezuela’s security forces.
In the south of the country, criminal groups devoted to illegal mining, known as sindicatos, emerged under government protection in Bolívar state. Among the most prominent are the R Organization, based in the mines of Tumeremo in Sifontes municipality; Tren de Guayana, a long-standing sindicato that evolved from an extortion gang into one that controls territory and mines in the municipalities of Roscio and El Callao; and the Las Claritas Sindicato, one of the most consolidated mining mafias in Sifontes municipality.
The colectivos, created during the government of Hugo Chávez, continued to serve as an apparatus of repression under Maduro’s rule. After the July 2024 presidential elections, amid protests over the disputed results, these shock groups were activated and mobilized, once again confirming that they are an established tool for breaking up demonstrations. Among the most prominent colectivos are the Peace Brigades (Cuadrillas de Paz – Cupaz), created in 2019 to impose state control in the face of protests.
Security Forces
Venezuela’s security forces are deeply affected by corruption and have been accused of human rights abuses, repressing political dissent, and targeting criminal groups in defense of the regime’s interests.
Venezuela’s armed forces are made up of the army, navy, air force, national guard, and national militia. There is evidence that corrupt factions within these institutions — particularly the national guard and the army — are involved in organized crime networks, including human trafficking and smuggling, as well as drug trafficking. These criminal ties have led to dozens of military officers and officials being sanctioned by the US government since 2008. Operating alongside the armed forces are the Bolivarian National Police (Policía Nacional Bolivariana – PNB), created in 2009, and the Scientific, Penal, and Criminal Investigations Corps (Cuerpo de Investigaciones Científicas, Penales y Criminalísticas – CICPC), which is responsible for criminal investigations. Both bodies have also been accused of participating in criminal activity.
Under Maduro’s rule, abuses by the security forces intensified. One of the most notorious examples was the security offensive known as Operation Liberation and Protection of the People (Operación Liberación y Protección del Pueblo – OLP), during which police and military personnel were accused of carrying out massacres, extrajudicial killings, torture, and illegal detentions.
Beyond human rights violations, corruption has become institutionalized within the security forces. Low salaries, combined with the recruitment of unqualified candidates and a lack of effective oversight, have encouraged officials to engage in criminal activity, particularly extortion. In some cases, officers operate extortion rings, visiting businesses to demand “protection fees.” They have also arrested people on false charges and demanded bribes for their release. There have also been reports of the creation of checkpoints, where transport workers and civilians are forced to pay fees in US dollars to security personnel in order to continue their journeys.
Judicial System
Since 2015, Venezuela has been ranked as the country with the weakest rule of law in the region by the World Justice Project. Likewise, Venezuela has fallen steadily in the rankings of Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index, becoming the world’s third-most corrupt country by 2024. The Venezuelan judicial system has been repeatedly criticized by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights for the instrumentalization of the courts to censor the opposition and bolster the ruling regime.
At the local level, circuit judges and other members of the judiciary are frequent targets of organized crime. Low salaries and weak oversight of judicial processes have made the system highly permeable to corruption and intimidation. At the same time, the overwhelming caseload has led to the indiscriminate detention of people who are under investigation and awaiting trial.
Similarly, Attorney General Tarek William Saab, acting in coordination with the ruling party, has since 2018 used his office to purge state institutions in line with the regime’s demands. In 2024, Saab arrested several former ministers and officials, including Tareck El Aissami, a former close ally of Nicolás Maduro, accusing them of running a transnational corruption scheme. In practice, the case amounted to a purge of a political faction within the ruling movement.
Prisons
Venezuela’s prison system has long exposed severe security failures under both the Chávez and Maduro administrations, including violence, overcrowding, and a loss of state control.
For years, many of the country’s prisons were effectively run by criminal bosses known as pranes. After the collapse of prison security and record levels of violence, the government delegated internal order to these figures. In exchange for their cooperation, the pranes were granted total control over prisons and the privileges that came with it. They also benefited from implicit impunity to carry out criminal activities inside and outside prison walls, including extorting other people who were incarcerated through a system known as the causa, as well as crimes such as kidnapping, extortion, and retail drug dealing.
In late 2023, the Maduro regime intervened in seven prisons that had been under the control of these criminal leaders. However, several of the most powerful pranes managed to flee before the raids, according to investigators and organizations specializing in prison issues. This fueled suspicions that the operations may have been negotiated between the pranes and the state.
These interventions failed to address the structural problems that allowed the pranato system to develop. With limited state resources to implement real reform, entrenched corruption within the security forces, judicial delays, and chronic overcrowding, Venezuela’s prisons are likely to remain vulnerable to organized crime.
