The US sent undercover DEA agents to Venezuela to link Nicolás Maduro’s inner circle to drug trafficking

A 15-page secret memo accessed by The Associated Press reveals that the DEA, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, sent three undercover agents to Venezuela in 2018 to investigate and build cases against allies of President Nicolás Maduro for alleged drug trafficking. The mission, called Operation Money Badger, crossed the lines of international law, and was launched at a time of heightened tensions between Washington and Caracas. In May of that year, Maduro was reelected as the country’s president in an election largely questioned and rejected by the international community. As a result, then-President Donald Trump launched his “maximum pressure” campaign to remove Maduro.

As reported by the news agency, the memo states that one of the DEA spies’ objectives was to investigate military officer José Vielma Mora, currently a legislator in the National Assembly for the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV). Vielma has held important positions within the Venezuelan government since the times of Hugo Chávez (president between 1999 and 2013), including trade minister, head of Venezuela’s tax agency, and governor of the border state of Táchira. Also investigated was former military officer Luis Motta Dominguez, then electricity minister and cited in the memo as Vielma’s alleged partner in crime. Dozens of others were also investigated, including Maduro himself, according to AP.

In its investigation, the Miami DEA had the help of a professional money launderer accused of swindling $800 million from Venezuela’s foreign currency system through a fraudulent import scheme.

“It is necessary to conduct this operation unilaterally and without notifying Venezuelan officials,” the memo states. The Associated Press indicates that because the Operation skirted Venezuelan and international law, it required the approval of what is known as the Sensitive Activity Review Committee, or SARC, a secretive panel of senior State and Justice Department officials that is reserved for the most sensitive DEA cases involving tricky ethical, legal or foreign policy considerations.

The memo, which authorized secretly recording Venezuelan officials in undercover meetings, was accidentally uploaded to the Manhattan Attorney General’s Office website along with dozens of exhibits from the case against two former DEA agents, Manny Recio and John Constanzo Jr., who were convicted of leaking confidential law enforcement information to Miami defense attorneys as part of a bribery conspiracy. One of those cases was Alex Saab’s, who was finally released at the end of 2023 in a prisoner swap negotiated by Washington and Caracas.

Nearly two decades ago, Venezuela shut down its anti-drug cooperation program with the DEA. In 2005, Hugo Chávez expelled the American officials who were in the country, accusing them of espionage, in one of the many episodes of hostilities between the Bolivarian regime and the United States. As of now, Maduro’s government has not yet commented on the memo. However, the report, which evidences the interference of the U.S. anti-drug agency in a foreign country, comes at a very delicate moment for U.S.-Venezuelan relations. It comes after the U.S. State Department announced that it would not be renewing the oil and gas licenses it had granted to Venezuela — as part of a series of agreements reached between Maduro’s government and the opposition — if the Chavista regime does not allow opposition candidate María Corina Machado to run in the presidential elections that are to take place this year.

Days ago, before the memo’s existence became known, the Venezuelan president accused the DEA and the CIA of planning conspiracies to destabilize the country. “I don’t think President [Joe] Biden is involved,” Maduro said in a recent television appearance. “But the CIA and the DEA are independent, imperialist, criminal agencies.”

Washington is also asking Maduro to open an electoral registry, to allow the participation of independent electoral observation missions, and to formally announce this year’s election schedule. With all this, the Venezuelan conflict, which briefly seemed to be going in the right direction with the participation of the United States in negotiations, seems to once again be at a standstill.

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