Two nephews of Venezuela’s powerful first lady confessed to trying to smuggle 800kg of cocaine into the US, according to prosecutors in the politically charged case.
The court filings on Friday by US prosecutors shed new light on the case that has sounded alarm bells about high-level corruption and drug trafficking by Venezuela’s political elite at a time of increasing economic and political turmoil in the South American nation.
Efrain Campo and Francisco Flores were arrested in November last year in Haiti in a sting operation coordinated by the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).
They were then flown to New York City, where they are in jail awaiting trial for conspiring to smuggle cocaine into the US. Both have pleaded not guilty.
The documents filed on Friday seek to refute a motion by the defendants’ attorneys to suppress their post-arrest statements to DEA agents on their way to New York because they allegedly had not been informed of their rights and were coerced after being taken into custody by armed men in ski masks in what they at first thought was a kidnapping.
Prosecutors allege Campo and Flores hatched the drug deal in about two months. They said it was first brought to the attention of the DEA by a wheelchair-bound cooperating witness nicknamed “El Sentado,” who met Campo and Flores in Honduras and ended up killed three weeks after their arrest.
As part of the DEA investigation, confidential sources were sent to Caracas to meet with the two young men.
The court documents include photographs allegedly taken from a secret video of those meetings that prosecutors say show Campo examining a brick of cocaine with plastic gloves as Flores looks on.
Campo allegedly said the narcotics came from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.
During the meetings, Campo allegedly brags about owning several Ferraris and being at “war” with the US and Venezuela’s opposition.
He also describes high-level connections with the government that will make it easy to move drugs through Caracas’ international airport and prevent any cocaine-laden plane from being follow by law enforcement because, he said, “it departs as if .... someone from our family was on the plane,” according to a statement by US attorneys for the southern district of New York.
In the court filings, Campo first suggested to agents that the cocaine deal was to fund Cilia Flores’ congressional campaign.
“I know I said that, but in reality it was for me,” a court document quotes Campo as telling a DEA agent.
“Campo stated that friends in the drug business had told him to be careful not to get robbed so he made the statement regarding his Mom’s campaign for protection,” the DEA agent wrote in his post-arrest report.
In reality, Campo said he was struggling financially, earning US$800 a week from a fleet of taxis he owned in Panama, according to the documents.
He also described being rebuffed by his cousin, Erick Malpica-Flores, then finance director of state-run oil giant PDVSA, in a plan to charge commissions to businesses trying to collect on debts owed them by the company.
Campo, 29, said he and his wanted to make US$20 million from multiple drug shipments, enough to go live in the US with his wife and child. He said his family would “kill him” if they knew what he was up to, according to the documents.
Campo’s lawyer did not immediately respond to an e-mailed request for comment.
The US has been steadily stepping up pressure on high-ranking members of Venezuela’s military, police and government officials for their role in making the country an important transit zone for narcotics.
Several Venezuelan officials, including a former defense minister and head of military intelligence, have been indicted or sanctioned in the US, and many more are under investigation.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of