As a key transit point for cocaine shipments destined for Europe and the United States, Venezuela has long been a staging ground for Colombian guerrilla groups and other players in the drug trade. The country has also produced its own brand of criminal actors, including megagangs controlled by prison bosses and powerful government-supported paramilitary forces, known as colectivos. Officials at the highest levels of the government and security have links to organized crime, including a shadowy group within the military dubbed the “Cartel of the Suns.”
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Venezuela Oil Crisis May Set Limits on PDVSA Impunity
Venezuelan officials may have finally met a PDVSA corruption scandal they cannot allow to go unpunished, hinting at just how dire the country’s oil and gas shortage has become.
Venezuela’s Saab Story Continues With Benefit Concert
As alleged Maduro financier Alex Saab awaits potential extradition to the United States, the Venezuelan government decided that a concert catered by a company linked to Saab’s illicit activities would…
El Coqui’s Ambition Fuels Urban Warfare in Caracas
Recent shootouts between security forces and Venezuela's El Coqui gang included a clash in which at least two dozen people were gunned down, and experts warn of continued violence as…
Venezuela Profile
Venezuela is a key transit country for drug shipments leaving Colombia for the United States and Europe. Foreign groups, particularly Colombians, have traditionally controlled Venezuela's drug trade, being attracted by poor rule of law and corruption. There is evidence, however, that beginning in the mid-2000s corrupt elements in the security forces stepped up their role in the business, forming a loose network dubbed the "Cartel de los Soles" (Cartel of the Suns). Corrupt members of the security forces have also been major providers of weapons to the black market, to the particular benefit of Colombian guerrilla groups like the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia – FARC) and the National Liberation Army (Ejército de Liberación Nacional – ELN).
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Drug traffickers engage in a creative game of hide and seek with coast guards and other security forces that board their ships at sea.
A US court case seeks to compensate victims of the FARC with assets seized from Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA, in the latest push by US prosecutors to establish legal…
Ongoing interceptions targeting sex trafficking rings operating between Venezuela and Trinidad and Tobago have revealed the extent to which Venezuelan women and minors are being continually smuggled to the island…
A new report on human trafficking in Venezuela's Bolívar state shows that forced labor camps and sex trafficking rings are rampant in the region's illegal mines.
The flow of cocaine to Europe may have suffered along with most licit businesses due to the Covid-19 crisis, but few believe the damage to the drug trade will be…
In July 2020, British drug trafficker Robert Dawes was sentenced to 22 years in prison for his role in one of the most emblematic European drug trafficking cases of the…
