Your fact-checks will appear here
Geological surveys and recent reporting locate most confirmed and reported coltan and rare earth occurrences in Venezuela’s southern Guayana/Orinoco region—especially Bolívar and adjoining Amazonas—la...
Available reporting describes “go‑fast” boats as relatively small, high‑speed smuggling vessels capable of carrying large drug loads and crews; one recent U.S.–targeted vessel was described as “on the...
Venezuelan-linked traffickers use maritime corridors from Venezuela’s Caribbean coast — including Sucre, Falcón and Margarita Island — to send cocaine to the Eastern Caribbean (islands such as Martini...
Available reporting does not provide a single, authoritative cumulative dollar figure for all assets Venezuela has seized or nationalized since Hugo Chávez took office in 1999; instead, contemporary a...
Traffickers moving Andean cocaine routinely use Venezuela as a transshipment hub; reporting and analysis point to northwestern Venezuelan ports (Zulia, Falcón, La Guaira) sending loads to nearby ABC i...
Drug flows from Venezuela use multiple maritime corridors: the Caribbean route from Venezuela’s northeastern coast (including Margarita Island and Sucre state) to the Eastern Caribbean and onward to E...
Caribbean routes and ports tied to Venezuela — notably Margarita Island and waters off Venezuela — have been the focal point of recent U.S. military counternarcotics activity, with U.S. strikes in the...
Venezuelan criminal networks and state-linked actors function today primarily as transit facilitators, enablers and sometimes co-producers in the continental cocaine trade rather than as the original ...
Multiple U.S. agencies — notably the U.S. military (including Navy task forces) and the Drug Enforcement Administration — along with the U.S. Coast Guard, Congress and international bodies are central...
Available reporting documents broad patterns of Venezuelan-linked smuggling — use of coastal “go-fast” boats, air bridges and Caribbean transshipment hubs — but does not provide technical, step‑by‑ste...
U.S. authorities and several major news outlets say the label “Cartel de los Soles” refers to a network of senior Venezuelan military officers and government officials that U.S. officials allege is ti...
Venezuelan-origin narco-boats typically operate as part of a maritime transit system that moves Colombian-produced cocaine toward the Eastern Caribbean islands and, via secondary legs, into Central Am...
Colombia remains a central node in global cocaine production and shipping: domestic growers and processors supply large volumes of cocaine that are funneled north via maritime and overland routes, oft...
Since 2017, U.S. prosecutors, U.S. agencies, investigative outlets, and ex-official defectors have accused Nicolás Maduro and high‑ranking Venezuelan officials of collaborating with drug cartels—alleg...
The "Cartel of the Suns" is a label used since the early 1990s to describe alleged links between Venezuelan military officers, senior officials and illicit trafficking; the name references the sun ins...
Venezuelan military and security forces are repeatedly implicated by U.S. prosecutors and investigative reporting as key enablers—sometimes organizers—of large-scale cocaine shipments, accused of prov...
Traffickers move cocaine out of Venezuela using a mix of maritime, aerial and terrestrial routes — including go-fast boats, semi‑submersibles/narco‑submarines, maritime concealment in commercial cargo...
AIS, manifests, cargo recoveries and crew testimony have not, in the public record cited here, been presented transparently by U.S. authorities to distinguish Venezuelan fishing boats from drug-traffi...
U.S., regional press and investigative outlets report repeated links between members of Venezuela’s armed forces and drug trafficking networks — commonly labeled the “Cartel of the Suns” — but they al...
Available reporting and public-data sources do not record a clear, centralized tally of “which Venezuelan ports have the highest recorded cocaine seizures destined for the United States since 2020”; m...