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Venezuelan-linked smugglers use fast, open-hulled fishing skiffs—commonly called go-fast boats—to ferry cocaine and other contraband to nearby Caribbean islands such as Trinidad and hops across the Ea...
Venezuelan-linked traffickers have been implicated in maritime flows across both the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific, using coastal hubs like Sucre and Margarita Island and routes toward the Eastern Car...
Recent government and reporting data point to Colombia as the principal source of cocaine that reaches the United States: UN and Reuters reporting says Colombia was the source for most drugs crossing ...
U.S. authorities have repeatedly accused Nicolás Maduro and senior Venezuelan officials of running or enabling large-scale drug trafficking—charging Maduro with “narco‑terrorism,” placing bounties up ...
Available reporting does not give a single, authoritative percentage for “what share of cocaine seized in the US is traced to Venezuela in 2024–2025.” Major U.S. and international reports cited in the...
Estimates and reporting put the annual volume of cocaine transiting Venezuela in the rough range of 200–250 metric tons in recent years, a figure the U.S. State Department first cited for 2020 and tha...
The United States has both indicted and sanctioned multiple high‑level Venezuelan officials on drug‑related charges: the Justice Department unsealed indictments charging Nicolás Maduro and 14 current ...
Allegations and investigations across U.S. agencies, international press and long-form reporting say members of Venezuela’s state apparatus — especially military officers and some senior officials — h...
Reporting from 2024–2025 shows competing pictures: some monitors and Venezuelan authorities recorded large seizure figures (Transparencia Venezuela cited “more than 848 tons” seized in 2024) while ind...
Boats have long been a key tool in the movement of illicit drugs from South America, and reporting shows Venezuelan coastal towns and criminal groups are part of that maritime ecosystem — but the pict...
San Salvador (and El Salvador broadly) has seen a dramatic fall in homicides since 2015 — official figures and analysts place national homicide rates at about 1.9 per 100,000 in 2024 and even lower by...
The assembled evidence includes formal U.S. criminal indictments unsealed in March 2020 charging President Nicolás Maduro and 14 current or former Venezuelan officials with , alleging a long‑running p...
Venezuelan islands and cays — including Margarita and the Los Roques archipelago — are documented transshipment nodes used to move Colombian cocaine onward to the Caribbean, Europe and the U.S., in pa...
Drug traffickers use the Caribbean and Central American coastlines as transit and transshipment zones—exploiting long, sparsely patrolled coastlines, many small islands, and weak state capacity—to mov...
Law enforcement and international agencies say clandestine fentanyl manufacture relies on a shifting set of precursor chemicals — historically N‑phenethyl‑4‑piperidone (NPP) and aniline derivative ANP...
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 s...
Since Nicolás Maduro’s rule (post-2013 and prominent through 2025) reporting and analysis say Venezuelan territory and officials increasingly figure in U.S. allegations about drug transit and state-li...
Publicly released evidence tying Venezuelan state actors to organized drug trafficking is substantial but heterogeneous: it includes U.S. indictments and criminal charges, leaked investigative documen...
San Salvador and El Salvador have seen a dramatic fall in homicides: official and analyst data show the national homicide rate dropped to about 1.9 per 100,000 in 2024 (114 homicides) and to roughly 1...
Available reporting shows Colombia is by far the dominant source of cocaine interdicted en route to the United States, while Ecuador and Venezuela account for smaller shares and often serve as transit...