Maduro’s boasting ‘narconephews’ helped nail him on drug traffic charge

[F-22Raptor]

In the end it was the boast about Nicolas Maduro’s private airport hangar that would seal their fate.

At a secret meeting in Honduras, novice drug dealers Efrain Campo, 29, and his cousin Franqui Flores, 30, bragged to a Mexican cartel chief about their influence with their uncle, the president of Venezuela.

It was the fall of 2015, and the cousins were planning their first drug shipment to the US: 800 kilos of cocaine worth more than $20 million that they would transport on a private plane from Simon Bolivar International Airport in Caracas.

How would they get such a huge shipment — nearly a metric ton — through the busy airport, asked the incredulous Mexican dealer, a secret informant for the US Drug Enforcement Administration, who had spent weeks helping the federal agency lay a trap for the young men the Venezuelan opposition press would later dub the “narcosobrinos” or “narconephews.”

Although they knew that seasoned drug traffickers used clandestine jungle landing strips to load cocaine onto small planes, the cousins boasted of their unfettered access to Terminal Four at the Simon Bolivar International Airport.

“The airplane will leave from there as if it belongs to the family,” they assured their contact.

It was a statement that would not only seal their fate, but help expose the rank corruption of Maduro’s regime and lead to last week’s bombshell federal indictment in New York, charging the Venezuelan leader and members of his inner circle with drug trafficking and “narco-terrorism” against the United States.

Socialist leader Nicolas Maduro inherited Venezuela’s narco-state from his predecessor Hugo Chavez, a former army paratrooper and failed coup plotter who rode a popular wave of fury against the country’s ruling elites to become president in 1999.

In order to shore up his personal wealth and ensure his political future, Chavez founded the Cartel of the Suns, a drug-trafficking organization comprised of high-level military, government officials and intelligence operatives “to facilitate the importation of tons of cocaine into the United States,” according to last week’s indictment. The name of the cartel is a reference to the sun insignias affixed to the uniforms of high-ranking Venezuelan military officials who are members of the cartel.

The hundreds of millions of dollars they earned from cocaine trafficking was an easy way to ensure a steady stream of much-needed cash into a country where failed Marxist policies, such as government control of the economy, would begin to fuel runaway inflation and lead to widespread shortages and poverty for millions of Venezuelans. Chavez refused to cooperate with the DEA, pointedly kicking their operatives out of the country in 2005, accusing the agency of spying and violating Venezuelan sovereignty.

Instead, the government cartel partnered with dissident members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, a guerrilla group, “that became one of the largest producers of cocaine in the world,” court papers say. The rebels, known by their Spanish-language acronym FARC, currently control a large swath of territory near the border with Venezuela where they operate dozens of cocaine labs, a federal law enforcement source told The Post.

FARC fought a five-decade war against the Colombian government, beginning in 1964, that resulted in more than 200,000 deaths. Although a peace deal was signed in 2016, thousands of rebels have resumed the struggle, financed by their hold over the cocaine trade.

“The FARC exchanges cocaine for weapons, such as AR-15s, with the Venezuelan government,” said the source.

Most of the time, the Venezuelan authorities dispatch the cocaine to the US on their own, the source said. When Mexican cartels fly over Venezuelan airspace, they charge a flight tax. The amount of tax depends on the size of the loads being transported, he said, and ranges from $30,000 for a few kilos to up to $1 million for a multi-ton load. The Venezuelan military has standing orders to shoot down any cartel plane that refuses to pay the tax, the source said.

Maduro was a rising star in Chavez’s administration, occupying several high-level positions including vice president. When Chavez announced that he was stepping down to battle cancer in 2012, Maduro became his hand-picked successor and won presidential elections a year later when he also took charge of the country’s drug trade, personally organizing many of the cocaine shipments himself, court papers said.

When Maduro began to crack down on the opposition during the country’s Constituent Assembly elections in 2017 and presidential elections a year later, the US and several other countries increased a series of sanctions against the country and its leaders. Sanctions were stepped up in 2019, after Maduro refused to concede to legislator Juan Guaido, who won presidential elections and named himself interim leader of the country — a move that has been supported by more than 50 countries, including the US. Maduro’s brutal crackdown on the opposition and his refusal to leave office has sparked a deep crisis in the country.

The sanctions, which effectively acted as an embargo isolating Venezuela economically, plunged Maduro even further into the drug trade. Set against falling oil prices in the oil-rich Andean country, Maduro had to get even more creative to earn cash. In the last few years, he has resorted to selling tons of Venezuela’s federal gold reserves as well as gold from illegal mining ventures, spiriting bricks of the precious metal onto private charter aircraft for flights to Istanbul, ultimately destined for sale to European banks.

In 2018, 23 tons of gold were transported from Venezuela to Turkey, and 20 tons of monetary gold were removed from the country’s bank vaults, according to published reports. Colombia’s National Liberation Army, a violent guerrilla group, has been involved in gold smuggling operations for Maduro, the federal source said.

And in his bid to hold on to power, Maduro has recruited his own family members to the cartel. When Franqui and Efrain were caught on a fueling stop in Haiti with their planeload of cocaine in Nov. 2015, they immediately confessed to their DEA captors that they needed to raise money for the congressional campaign of their aunt, Cilia Flores, the first lady of Venezuela.

Described as Venezuela’s Claire Underwood, after the fictional Machiavellian US first lady in Netflix’s “House of Cards,” Flores is the most powerful woman in Venezuela. A committed follower of Chavez, she met Maduro while Chavez was still in power and married him in 2013.

“We need the money,” said one of Flores’ nephews as they were flown to Westchester County Airport in White Plains after they were captured in Haiti, court papers say. “Why? Because the Americans are hitting us hard with money. Do you understand? The opposition is getting an infusion of a lot of money and so, it’s also us, that’s why we are at war with them.”

After their trial, the “narconephews” were sentenced to 18 years in Florida prisons in 2017. An outraged Flores accused the DEA of kidnapping them.

“They have tried to link high-ranking government officials to make it look like they are complicit with the drug trade,” said Flores at the time.

Maduro seemed to echo her sentiments last week when he responded to the indictment against him by blasting the US and calling President Trump a “racist and supremacist cowboy,” vowing to fight by any means if the US and its ally Colombia try to invade Venezuela.

https://nypost.com/2020/03/28/maduros-boasting-narconephews-helped-nail-him-on-drug-traffic-charge/