How have independent experts assessed the existence and structure of the 'Cartel de los Soles'?
Executive summary
Independent experts generally reject the notion that the "Cartel de los Soles" is a single, unified, hierarchical drug cartel; instead they describe it as a journalistic label or a loose, distributed pattern of corruption in Venezuela's armed forces in which individual officers and cells collaborate with traffickers [1] [2] [3]. U.S. government designations that treat the name as a coherent terrorist or criminal organization have been sharply contested by analysts and by drug‑control bodies for lacking corroborating evidence of a centralized command structure [4] [5] [6] [7].
1. Origins of the label and what experts actually mean by “Cartel”
The phrase "Cartel de los Soles" emerged in Venezuelan media in the early 1990s after investigations into two National Guard generals and refers to the sun insignia on military epaulettes, and many scholars and organised‑crime analysts say the term evolved into shorthand for military corruption rather than the name of a discrete criminal enterprise [1] [2] [3]. Insight Crime, UNAM researchers and other specialist commentators emphasize that practitioners of the field do not treat the Soles as a classical cartel with a clear chain of command but as a mosaic of corrupt actors and cells embedded across army, navy, air force and the Bolivarian National Guard [2] [3].
2. Evidence of involvement — concrete, but atomised
Independent reporting and investigations document multiple incidents in which Venezuelan military and political officials were implicated in drug trafficking, money laundering, smuggling and related crimes, and U.S. sanctions and indictments have targeted named individuals over the years — facts experts concede even as they resist calling that pattern a single cartel [1] [8]. At the same time, major drug‑threat assessments from agencies such as the DEA and UNODC historically do not list a "Cartel de los Soles" as a discrete transnational trafficker in the way they list Mexico's Sinaloa or CJNG, which analysts use to argue that Venezuela plays a supporting or transit role rather than being the origin of a monolithic organisation [6] [7].
3. The U.S. government’s narrative versus expert skepticism
In 2025 the U.S. State Department and Treasury moved to label "Cartel de los Soles" under counter‑terror and sanctions authorities and the Department of State asserted it was headed by Nicolás Maduro and other senior officials [4] [5]. Independent observers — including investigative outlets, regional analysts and academic experts — criticized that framing as legally consequential but analytically thin, warning that the administrative record presented for designation does not demonstrate a unified command structure and may conflate systemic corruption with a single criminal hierarchy [1] [9] [7].
4. Why structure matters: policy implications of naming
Experts stress the practical difference between naming a "network of corrupt officials" and naming "a cartel led by a head of state": the former invites targeted investigations, prosecutions and sanctions against individuals and units, while the latter opens broader policy tools like FTO designation that critics say can be used to justify escalated measures — an argument advanced by media commentators and regional analysts who view the designation as politically charged [6] [9] [10]. Several investigative teams and think tanks point out that the absence of the term from DEA and UNODC threat assessments weakens claims that Venezuela is a central organising hub comparable to established cartels [6] [7].
5. The consensus, the disputes, and the evidentiary gap
The consensus among independent experts is clear in one respect: there are multiple, well‑documented episodes of military and official involvement in illicit activity in Venezuela, but the evidence does not reliably support the image of a disciplined, hierarchical "Cartel de los Soles" controlling a transnational criminal empire; instead, sources describe a patchwork of corrupt actors and localized criminal cells that sometimes cooperate with foreign cartels [2] [1] [7]. Where opinions diverge is on interpretation and policy — U.S. authorities treat the name as an organisation that can be designated and disrupted at scale [4], while many independent analysts caution against conflating systemic state corruption with the sort of centralized cartel leadership implied by that label [1] [6].