How many kilograms of cocaine have been seized from vessels departing Venezuela in the past 12 months?
Executive summary
Available sources do not provide a single, authoritative tally of kilograms of cocaine seized specifically from vessels departing Venezuela in the past 12 months; reporting and datasets instead give scattered seizure incidents (for example, individual seizures of 1–3.3 tons) and broader country- or region-level totals that do not isolate “vessels departing Venezuela” [1] [2] [3]. Major international agencies (UNODC/DEA) and investigative outlets treat Venezuela mainly as a transit point and report seizures across routes rather than a neat 12‑month vessel-origin total [3] [4].
1. No single number in available reporting — fragmented incident counts, not a consolidated 12‑month total
Journalistic and institutional sources collected here report significant individual seizures tied to vessels that left Venezuelan ports — for example a fishing vessel found with 2.4 metric tons near Martinique (reported as a case tied to Margarita Island) and other interdictions of about 1 ton in U.S. Coast Guard operations — but none of the provided sources publishes a comprehensive, verified sum of kilograms seized from vessels departing Venezuela over the last 12 months [1]. The UNODC maps and DEA reporting describe trafficking flows and seizures by route and country but do not present the specific 12‑month “vessels-departing‑Venezuela” aggregate the query asks for [3] [4].
2. Examples point to multiple large seizures but not a complete dataset
Reporting documents individual large captures: a Spain-bound Venezuelan fishing vessel seized by Spanish authorities with about 3.3 metric tons near the Canary Islands is cited in press coverage, and other cases include multi-ton intercepts linked to Venezuelan departure points [2] [1]. InSight Crime and regional reporting list seizures and patterns but compile incident round‑ups rather than producing a single country‑origin kilogram total for the past year [5] [1].
3. International datasets emphasize flows and routes, not origin-by‑vessel accounting
UNODC’s World Drug Report and associated maps analyze trafficking flows departing the Americas and documented seizures by route (Eastern Pacific, Western Caribbean, trans‑Atlantic), demonstrating that cocaine moves through Venezuela as a transit corridor to multiple markets — especially Europe — but those products are tracked as flows and seizures along routes rather than as a neat “kilograms from vessels that left Venezuela in the last 12 months” figure [3] [6]. DEA and U.S. reporting often focus on production countries (Colombia, Peru, Bolivia) and on seizure locations that do not always equate to vessel origin [4] [7].
4. Competing narratives: transit hub vs. primary source — sources disagree on scale and targets
Some U.S. political statements and indictments allege Venezuela or elements within its state apparatus facilitate large volumes of trafficking, sometimes citing hundreds of metric tons transiting Venezuelan territory; other authoritative analyses and UN/DEA materials emphasize that most cocaine originates in Andean producers and that Venezuela is principally a transit route, with seizures from Venezuelan-origin vessels representing a subset of overall flows [8] [4] [3]. Journalists and analysts also stress that many vessels from Venezuelan waters are headed to Europe via Caribbean transits and West Africa, which complicates U.S.‑centric framings of trafficking [6] [2].
5. Methodological limits: why an exact 12‑month kilogram total is difficult to produce
Available sources show three core obstacles to producing the requested number: authorities report seizures by discovery location rather than by precise validated vessel origin (so origin attribution is uncertain), multiple jurisdictions (Venezuela, Caribbean states, European authorities, U.S. Coast Guard) collect seizure data in different formats, and public datasets like UNODC reports aggregate by route and year without isolating “vessels departing Venezuela” in the past 12 months [3] [1] [7]. Media case studies and agency round‑ups therefore provide incident snapshots but not the consolidated statistic you requested [1] [5].
6. What would be needed to answer definitively — and where to look next
To produce a defensible kilogram total you would need access to primary interdiction logs and harmonized metadata from the past 12 months from: Venezuelan port authorities and national police (if publicly released), regional Caribbean and Latin American law enforcement partners, the U.S. Coast Guard and Customs, and UNODC seizure datasets filtered by vessel origin. None of the supplied sources contains that harmonized, vessel‑origin filtered dataset (available sources do not mention a consolidated 12‑month total).
Limitations: This analysis uses only the supplied sources; other reporting or law‑enforcement databases not provided here may contain the exact number but are not part of this review (available sources do not mention a consolidated figure).