The interim vice president of Venezuela, Delcy Rodríguez, had been in the crosshairs of the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) for several years and was classified in 2022 as a “priority target,” a category reserved for suspects deemed to have “significant impact” in drug trafficking, according to documents obtained by the Associated Press.
The information contrasts with the stance of United States President Donald Trump, who has been praising Rodríguez as Washington’s preferred interlocutor to stabilize Venezuela after the capture of former president Nicolás Maduro, taken to the U.S. to answer drug-trafficking charges. This week, Trump said Rodríguez is a “formidable person” and said he maintains close contact with American authorities, including the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio.
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According to the documents, the DEA has maintained since at least 2018 a detailed intelligence file on Rodríguez, with records of known associates and allegations ranging from drug trafficking to gold smuggling. A confidential informant told the agency in early 2021 that hotels on Margarita Island in the Caribbean were being used “as fronts for money laundering.” Last year, Rodríguez was also linked to Alex Saab, Maduro’s ally who was imprisoned in 2020 on money-laundering charges in the United States.
The U.S. government has never publicly accused Rodríguez of any crime. She is also not among about a dozen Venezuelan officials charged with drug trafficking alongside Maduro. Yet her name appears in nearly ten DEA investigations, several of them ongoing, involving agency offices in Paraguay, Ecuador, and in cities such as Phoenix and New York.
Three current and former DEA agents who reviewed the documents at the AP’s request said the records indicate intense interest in Rodríguez for much of her tenure as vice president, which began in 2018. The documents do not explain why she was elevated to the status of “priority target,” a designation that requires formal justification for the allocation of additional investigative resources. The DEA maintains hundreds of priority targets simultaneously, and the label does not necessarily imply the opening of a criminal case.
“She was rising, so it isn’t surprising that she became a high-priority target because of the office,” said former Miami-based U.S. Attorney Kurt Lunkenheimer, who worked on several cases related to Venezuela. “But there is a difference between being a priority target and having enough evidence to sustain a charge.”
The co-director of the InSight Crime organization, Steve Dudley, said that “the current Venezuelan government is a hybrid criminal regime” and that “reaching positions of power at least involves tolerating or facilitating illicit activities.”
The documents also indicate American authorities’ interest in Rodríguez’s possible involvement in government contracts awarded to Saab. These investigations continue even after former U.S. President Joe Biden pardoned him in 2023, as part of a prisoner exchange involving Americans detained in Venezuela.
Rodríguez, 56, rose to the top of power as a close adviser to Maduro. In September 2018, the White House included her on a sanctions list, describing her as a key piece in maintaining the political control of the former Venezuelan president. Source: Associated Press.
*Content translated with the aid of Artificial Intelligence, reviewed and edited by the Broadcast Editorial Team, Grupo Estado’s real-time news system.
