US Attempts to Paint Nicolas Maduro as a Drug Baron

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - U.S. prosecutors have filed a 25-page indictment against Nicolas Maduro. It accuses the captured Venezuelan leader of running a state-sponsored drug terror network for years.

Maduro, it says, collaborated with the Venezuelan criminal gang Tren de Aragua, which now operates throughout Latin America, as well as with the Colombian FARC guerrilla group and the Mexican Sinaloa cartel, to smuggle cocaine into the U.S. and enrich himself personally.

The indictment described Venezuela as being systematically developed into a hub for international cocaine trafficking, with state aircraft and even the presidential hangar being used to transport cocaine.

From bus driver to president

Images of 63-year-old Maduro in prison clothing being taken to a New York court in an armored prison bus went around the world this week. Where did a journey that ended this way start?

At the beginning of his career in the early 1990s, Nicolas Maduro Moros worked as a bus driver in Venezuela's capital, Caracas.

He quickly rose to become union leader at the local transport company. The fact that he had previously spent a year attending political training courses in Cuba on a scholarship stood him in good stead. His political leanings probably also prompted him to join the Bolivarian Revolutionary Movement founded by Hugo Chavez. Chavez himself was in prison at the time, having recently led a bloody military coup in Venezuela that failed.

After only two years, Chavez was pardoned in 1994; just four years later, he was officially elected Venezuela's president. Under his wing, Maduro also enjoyed a meteoric political career. For six years he was a regular member of parliament, then president of the National Assembly, foreign minister and finally, when Chavez was already seriously ill with cancer, even vice president. 

Shortly before his death, Chavez appointed Maduro as his successor. But while something of a personality cult had developed around the charismatic Chavez during his lifetime, Maduro initially came across as rather wooden and awkward.

He won the first elections after Chavez's death in April 2013 by a razor-thin margin, but opposition figures and international election observers accused him of manipulation and intimidation, violence, imprisonment and torture — a pattern that was to be repeated in the subsequent presidential elections in 2018 and 2024. In 2021, the International Criminal Court launched an investigation into these allegations.

As the 2024 election was widely contested, neither the EU nor the U.S. considered him the legitimate president of the country. Nevertheless, Maduro remained in power for more than 12 years.

Venezuela's dramatic state collapse

During those 12 years, Maduro may have stopped driving buses, but he drove the entire country into the ground. Politically, he ruled in an increasingly authoritarian manner over time; he attempted to dissolve parliament on several occasions; opponents such as the current Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Corina Machado were persecuted, while others were arrested, tortured or disappeared. The United Nations repeatedly accused Maduro of crimes against humanity.

Economically, too, the country experienced an unprecedented decline. 

When Maduro took office, Venezuela's economy was already more than 90 percent dependent on oil exports. Falling oil prices led to dramatic revenue losses. The country's GDP collapsed and the government printed more money to manage the debt, causing hyperinflation. By 2018, the country's poverty rate had risen to over 90 percent. Almost one in four Venezuelans has fled abroad due to the massive economic crisis.

Critics of the previous government primarily blamed Maduro's political mismanagement and rampant corruption for the economic crisis. His supporters, on the other hand, see the causes not only in falling oil prices but above all in the fact that the U.S. and other countries imposed sanctions on the country, effectively waging an "economic war" against Venezuela.

Maduro had been on the U.S. radar for a long time

Relations between Venezuela and the U.S. continued to deteriorate over the past few years. Chavez had already pursued a socialist, openly anti-American course and sought closer ties with countries such as Russia, China, Cuba and Iran.

Chavez's speech to the UN General Assembly in 2006 became famous when he called then-U.S. President George W. Bush the "devil" and said that the "smell of sulfur" still lingered in the room after Bush had spoken. Shortly beforehand, the U.S. had imposed an arms embargo on Venezuela, which remains in place to this day.

Maduro continued the confrontational course with the U.S., and high-ranking Venezuelan politicians and business leaders had already been hit with sanctions under President Barack Obama.

At the time, Maduro accused Obama of wanting to "eliminate my government and intervene in Venezuela to take control."

During Donald Trump's first term in office from 2017 to 2021, the dispute escalated further. Trump imposed far-reaching oil and financial sanctions on Maduro's government, froze Venezuela's foreign assets and openly supported his opponent Juan Guaido in the 2018 elections. After a highly controversial election, Maduro managed to remain in power. Maduro also prevailed in the latest elections in August 2024 — in which he had banned several leading opposition politicians from running.

Was Maduro a drug lord?

During Trump's second term in office, the dispute with Maduro has intensified. In August 2025, Washington imposed a bounty of US$50 million on Maduro — the highest amount ever offered by the U.S. for the capture of an individual. The reason given was that Maduro was the head of the so-called Cartel de los Soles, a group of Venezuelan security forces allegedly involved in cocaine trafficking.

For years, the U.S. has brought sweeping charges against Maduro, his wife and others, accusing them of being part of a large drug and corruption network. However, U.S. intelligence agencies do not believe there is clear evidence of direct state coordination. Furthermore, there have been no international court rulings or UN reports to date indicating that Maduro has actually been involved in drug trafficking. Even in the latest UN World Drug Report, Venezuela plays only a minor role as a production and transit country.

Maduro himself pleaded "not guilty" at his first hearing in New York on Monday. He said he was "a decent man," "the legitimate president" of his country and a "prisoner of war of the United States."

He was then taken back to his prison in Brooklyn. It could be several months before the actual trial begins.

Read: Venezuela Launches Talks with US to Restore Ties

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