Venezuelan leader has long been on DEA’s radar

U.S. records detail the acting president’s suspected links to drug trafficking.

- BY JIM MUSTIAN, JOSHUA GOODMAN AND ERIC TUCKER

VENEZUELA’S acting President Delcy Rodriguez, center, arrives at the National Assembly on Thursday.

(ARIANA CUBILLOS Associated Press)

When President Trump announced the U.S. military capture of Nicolás Maduro to face drug trafficking charges in the U.S., he portrayed the autocrat’s vice president and longtime aide as America’s preferred partner to stabilize Venezuela amid a scourge of drugs, corruption and economic mayhem.

Left unspoken was the cloud of suspicion that long surrounded Delcy Rodríguez before she became acting president of the beleaguered nation after Maduro’s ouster.

In fact, Rodríguez has been on the radar of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration for years and in 2022 was even labeled a “priority target,” a designation DEA reserves for suspects believed to have a “significant impact” on the drug trade, according to records obtained by the Associated Press and more than half a dozen current and former U.S. law enforcement officials.

The DEA has amassed a detailed intelligence file on Rodríguez dating to at least 2018, the records show, cataloging her known associates and allegations including drug trafficking and gold smuggling. One confidential informant told the DEA in early 2021 that Rodríguez was using hotels in the Caribbean resort of Isla Margarita “as a front to launder money,” the records show. As recently as last year she was linked to Maduro’s alleged bagman, Alex Saab, whom U.S. authorities arrested in 2020 on money-laundering charges.

Taken together, the DEA investigations underscore how power has long been exercised in Venezuela, which is ranked as the world’s third most corrupt country by Transparency International.