All About FBL

INVESTIGATIONS

How Criminal Groups Helped Fill Venezuela's Post-Chávez Void

ELITES AND CRIME / 12 JUL 2023

Venezuela's Presidents Chávez and Maduro, to secure long-term power, ensured the country's criminal groups would answer to them.

COLECTIVOS / 12 JUL 2023

President Maduro has proven highly resilient, weathering sanctions abroad and an economic crisis at home. His hybrid state creation helped him to do so.

ELITES AND CRIME / 12 JUL 2023

The FBL were a useful criminal ally to Maduro's regime in Venezuela. They were granted favors, political power, and impunity, before seeing a precipitous downfall.

CONTRABAND / 17 JUN 2019

Pro-government guerrillas in Venezuela have begun training civilians in armed combat, showing the symbiotic relationship between embattled President Nicolás…

COLECTIVOS / 10 OCT 2014

Members of a "collective" killed by police were buried in a public funeral in Caracas, amid concerns that these armed civilian groups -- many originally supplied and trained by…

CARTEL OF THE SUNS / 9 NOV 2013

In Venezuela the drug traffickers wear camouflage. On the Colombian border, Colombian and Venezuelan guerrillas and the army fight for control of the drug trade. Senior military officers have also…

FBL / JULY 12, 2023

The Patriotic Forces of National Liberation (FPLN) is a guerrilla group based in western Venezuela, along the border with Colombia. It is also commonly known by its previous acronym: the…

FBL / 22 MAR 2012

If the Venezuelan opposition wins October's elections, pro-government armed groups could become a major threat to stability in the country, potentially evolving into a full-fledged insurgency.

About InSight Crime

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime Contributes Expertise Across the Board 

22 SEP 2023

This week InSight Crime investigators Sara García and María Fernanda Ramírez led a discussion of the challenges posed by Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s “Total Peace” plan within urban contexts. The…

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime Cited in New Colombia Drug Policy Plan

15 SEP 2023

InSight Crime’s work on emerging coca cultivation in Honduras, Guatemala, and Venezuela was cited in the Colombian government’s…

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime Discusses Honduran Women's Prison Investigation

8 SEP 2023

Investigators Victoria Dittmar and María Fernanda Ramírez discussed InSight Crime’s recent investigation of a massacre in Honduras’ only women’s prison in a Twitter Spaces event on…

THE ORGANIZATION

Human Trafficking Investigation Published in Leading Mexican Newspaper

1 SEP 2023

Leading Mexican media outlet El Universal featured our most recent investigation, “The Geography of Human Trafficking on the US-Mexico Border,” on the front page of its August 30…

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime's Coverage of Ecuador Leads International Debate

25 AUG 2023

This week, Jeremy McDermott, co-director of InSight Crime, was interviewed by La Sexta, a Spanish television channel, about the situation of extreme violence and insecurity in Ecuador…