The “Cartel of the Suns” (Cartel de los Soles) is the term used to describe the shadowy groups inside Venezuela’s military that are involved in a wide range of criminal activities, including gasoline smuggling, illegal mining and other corruption schemes, but primarily drug trafficking.
READ FULL PROFILE
InSight Crime charts the history of cocaine from agricultural extract to the basis of global criminal empires.
InSight Crime has presented its latest report, Venezuela’s Cocaine Revolution, the result of three years of investigation by the Venezuelan…
In October 2021, the Venezuelan Ministry of the Interior issued an ordinary looking statement about an antinarcotics operation in the…
In 2013, Nicolás Maduro became president of one of the world’s most important cocaine hubs, inheriting a unique drug trafficking…
On April 3, 2021, police in the east Venezuelan state of Anzoátegui acted on a tip-off to intercept a silver…
In 2016, two adopted nephews of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro were found guilty of a conspiracy to bring 800 kilograms…
COUNTRY PROFILE
CRIMINAL ACTORS
INVESTIGATIONS
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…
InSight Crime’s work on emerging coca cultivation in Honduras, Guatemala, and Venezuela was cited in the Colombian government’s…
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…
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…
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…
#SupportFreePress
Investigating organized crime is an expensive and often risky enterprise. Reaching primary sources and getting the real story involve extensive fieldwork. Please donate. Every dollar supports our mission.
DONATE NOW
Get fresh updates on organized crime from across the region delivered to your inbox.
SUBSCRIBE