The Trump administration is doubling to $50 million a reward for the arrest of Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro, accusing him of being one of many world’s largest narco-traffickers and dealing with cartels to flood the U.S. with fentanyl-laced cocaine.
“Underneath President Trump’s management, Maduro won’t escape justice and he will likely be held accountable for his despicable crimes,” Lawyer Basic Pam Bondi stated Thursday in a video asserting the reward.
A historical past of indictments and defiance
Maduro was indicted in Manhattan federal court docket in 2020, in the course of the first Trump presidency, together with a number of shut allies on federal prices of narco-terrorism and conspiracy to import cocaine.
On the time, the U.S. supplied a $15 million reward for his arrest. That was later raised by the Biden administration to $25 million—the identical quantity the U.S. supplied for the seize of Osama bin Laden following the Sept. 11, 2001, assaults.
Regardless of the large bounty, Maduro stays entrenched after defying the U.S., the European Union and a number of other Latin American governments, who condemned his 2024 reelection as a sham and acknowledged his opponent as Venezuela’s duly elected president.
Diplomatic offers and asset seizures
Final month, the Trump administration struck a deal to safe the discharge of 10 People jailed within the capital, Caracas, in alternate for Venezuela getting residence scores of migrants deported by the USA to El Salvador below the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
Shortly after, the White Home reversed course and allowed U.S. oil producer Chevron to renew drilling in Venezuela after it was beforehand blocked by U.S. sanctions.
Bondi stated the Justice Division has seized greater than $700 million in property linked to Maduro, together with two personal jets, and stated 7 million tons of seized cocaine had been traced on to the leftist chief.
Venezuela’s defiant response
Venezuelan Overseas Minister Yvan Gil launched a press release characterizing the reward as “pathetic” and accusing Bondi of orchestrating a “crude political propaganda operation.”
“We’re not stunned, coming from whom it comes from. The identical one who promised a nonexistent ‘secret checklist’ of Epstein and who wallows in scandals for political favors,” Gil stated, referring to the backlash Bondi confronted after the Justice Division introduced final month {that a} long-rumored “consumer checklist” of convicted intercourse offender Jeffrey Epstein doesn’t exist. “Her present is a joke, a determined distraction from her personal distress.”
