AP obtains documents showing Venezuelan leader Delcy Rodríguez has been on DEA’s radar for years

When Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump an­nounced the au­da­cious cap­ture of Nicolás Maduro to face drug traf­fick­ing charges in the U.S., he por­trayed the strong­man’s vice pres­i­dent and long­time aide as Amer­i­ca’s pre­ferred part­ner to sta­bi­lize Venezuela amid a scourge of drugs, cor­rup­tion and eco­nom­ic may­hem.

Left un­spo­ken was the cloud of sus­pi­cion that long sur­round­ed Del­cy Ro­dríguez be­fore she be­came act­ing pres­i­dent of the be­lea­guered na­tion ear­li­er this month.

In fact, Ro­dríguez has been on the radar of the U.S. Drug En­force­ment Ad­min­is­tra­tion for years and in 2022 was even la­beled a “pri­or­i­ty tar­get,” a des­ig­na­tion DEA re­serves for sus­pects be­lieved to have a “sig­nif­i­cant im­pact” on the drug trade, ac­cord­ing to records ob­tained by The As­so­ci­at­ed Press and more than a half dozen cur­rent and for­mer U.S. law en­force­ment of­fi­cials.

The DEA has amassed a de­tailed in­tel­li­gence file on Ro­dríguez dat­ing to at least 2018, the records show, cat­a­loging her known as­so­ciates and al­le­ga­tions rang­ing from drug traf­fick­ing to gold smug­gling. One con­fi­den­tial in­for­mant told the DEA in ear­ly 2021 that Ro­dríguez was us­ing ho­tels in the Caribbean re­sort of Is­la Mar­gari­ta “as a front to laun­der mon­ey,” the records show. As re­cent­ly as last year she was linked to Maduro’s al­leged bag man, Alex Saab, whom U.S. au­thor­i­ties ar­rest­ed in 2020 on mon­ey laun­der­ing charges.

The U.S. gov­ern­ment has nev­er pub­licly ac­cused Ro­dríguez of any crim­i­nal wrong­do­ing. No­tably for Maduro’s in­ner cir­cle, she’s not among the more than a dozen cur­rent Venezue­lan of­fi­cials charged with drug traf­fick­ing along­side the oust­ed pres­i­dent.

Ro­dríguez’s name has sur­faced in near­ly a dozen DEA in­ves­ti­ga­tions, sev­er­al of which re­main on­go­ing, in­volv­ing agents in field of­fices from Paraguay and Ecuador to Phoenix and New York, the AP learned. The AP could not de­ter­mine the spe­cif­ic fo­cus of each in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Three cur­rent and for­mer DEA agents who re­viewed the records at the re­quest of AP said they in­di­cate an in­tense in­ter­est in Ro­dríguez through­out much of her tenure as vice pres­i­dent, which be­gan in 2018. They were not au­tho­rized to dis­cuss DEA in­ves­ti­ga­tions and spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty.

The records re­viewed by AP do not make clear why Ro­dríguez was el­e­vat­ed to a “pri­or­i­ty tar­get,” a des­ig­na­tion that re­quires ex­ten­sive doc­u­men­ta­tion to jus­ti­fy ad­di­tion­al in­ves­tiga­tive re­sources. The agency has hun­dreds of pri­or­i­ty tar­gets at any giv­en mo­ment, and hav­ing the la­bel does not nec­es­sar­i­ly lead to be­ing charged crim­i­nal­ly.

“She was on the rise, so it’s not sur­pris­ing that she might be­come a high-pri­or­i­ty tar­get with her role,” said Kurt Lunken­heimer, a for­mer fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tor in Mi­a­mi who has han­dled mul­ti­ple cas­es re­lat­ed to Venezuela. “The is­sue is when peo­ple talk about you and you be­come a high-pri­or­i­ty tar­get, there’s a dif­fer­ence be­tween that and ev­i­dence sup­port­ing an in­dict­ment.”

Venezuela’s Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Min­istry did not re­spond to emails seek­ing com­ment.

The DEA and U.S. Jus­tice De­part­ment al­so did not re­spond to re­quests for com­ment. Asked whether the pres­i­dent trusts Ro­dríguez, the White House re­ferred AP to Trump’s ear­li­er re­marks on a “very good talk” he had with the act­ing pres­i­dent Wednes­day, one day be­fore she met in Cara­cas with CIA Di­rec­tor John Rat­cliffe.

Al­most im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter Maduro’s cap­ture, Trump start­ed heap­ing praise on Ro­dríguez — this past week re­fer­ring to her as a “ter­rif­ic per­son — in close con­tact with of­fi­cials in Wash­ing­ton, in­clud­ing Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio.

The DEA’s in­ter­est in Ro­dríguez comes even as Trump has sought to in­stall her as the stew­ard of Amer­i­can in­ter­ests to nav­i­gate a volatile post-Maduro Venezuela, said Steve Dud­ley, co-di­rec­tor of In­Sight Crime, a think tank fo­cused on or­ga­nized crime in the Amer­i­c­as.

“The cur­rent Venezuela gov­ern­ment is a crim­i­nal-hy­brid regime. The on­ly way you reach a po­si­tion of pow­er in the regime is by, at the very least, abet­ting crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties,” said Dud­ley, who has in­ves­ti­gat­ed Venezuela for years. “This isn’t a bug in the sys­tem. This is the sys­tem.”

Those sen­ti­ments were echoed by op­po­si­tion leader Maria Co­ri­na Macha­do, who met with Trump at the White House Thurs­day in a bid to push for more U.S. sup­port for Venezue­lan democ­ra­cy.

“The Amer­i­can jus­tice sys­tem has suf­fi­cient in­for­ma­tion about her,” said Macha­do, re­fer­ring to Ro­dríguez. “Her pro­file is quite clear.”

Ro­dríguez, 56, worked her way to the apex of pow­er in Venezuela as a loy­al aide to Maduro, with whom she shares a deep-seat­ed left­ist bent stem­ming from her so­cial­ist fa­ther’s death in po­lice cus­tody when she was on­ly 7 years old. De­spite blam­ing the U.S. for her fa­ther’s death, she steadi­ly worked while for­eign min­is­ter and lat­er vice pres­i­dent to court Amer­i­can in­vest­ment dur­ing the first Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion, hir­ing lob­by­ists close to Trump and even or­der­ing the state oil com­pa­ny to make a $500,000 do­na­tion to his in­au­gur­al com­mit­tee.

The charm of­fen­sive flopped when Trump, urged on by Ru­bio, pres­sured Maduro to hold free and fair elec­tions. In Sep­tem­ber 2018,the White House sanc­tioned Ro­dríguez, de­scrib­ing her as key to Maduro’s grip on pow­er and abil­i­ty to “so­lid­i­fy his au­thor­i­tar­i­an rule.” She was al­so sanc­tioned ear­li­er by the Eu­ro­pean Union.

But those al­le­ga­tions fo­cused on her threat to Venezuela’s democ­ra­cy, not any al­leged in­volve­ment in cor­rup­tion.

“Venezuela is a failed state that sup­ports ter­ror­ism, cor­rup­tion, hu­man rights abus­es and drug traf­fick­ing at the high­est ech­e­lons. There is noth­ing po­lit­i­cal about this analy­sis,” said Rob Zachari­asiewicz, a long­time for­mer DEA agent who led in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to top Venezue­lan of­fi­cials and is now a man­ag­ing part­ner at Eli­cius In­tel­li­gence, a spe­cial­ist in­ves­ti­ga­tions firm. “Del­cy Ro­dríguez has been part of this crim­i­nal en­ter­prise.”

The DEA records seen by AP pro­vide an un­prece­dent­ed glimpse in­to the agency’s in­ter­est in Ro­dríguez. Much of it was dri­ven by the agency’s elite Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Di­vi­sion, the same Vir­ginia-based unit that worked with pros­e­cu­tors in Man­hat­tan to in­dict Maduro.

One of the records cites an un­named con­fi­den­tial in­for­mant link­ing Ro­dríguez to ho­tels in Mar­gari­ta Is­land that are al­leged­ly used as a front to laun­der mon­ey. The AP has been un­able to in­de­pen­dent­ly con­firm the in­for­ma­tion.

The U.S. has long con­sid­ered the re­sort is­land, north­east of the Venezue­lan main­land, a strate­gic hub for drug traf­fick­ing routes to the Caribbean and Eu­rope. Nu­mer­ous traf­fick­ers have been ar­rest­ed or tak­en haven there over the years, in­clud­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guz­man’s Sinaloa car­tel.

The records al­so in­di­cate the feds were look­ing at Ro­dríguez’s in­volve­ment in gov­ern­ment con­tracts award­ed to Maduro’s al­ly Saab — in­ves­ti­ga­tions that re­main on­go­ing even af­ter Pres­i­dent Joe Biden par­doned him in 2023 as part of a pris­on­er swap for Amer­i­cans im­pris­oned in Venezuela.

The Colom­bian busi­ness­man rose to be­come one of Venezuela’s top fix­ers as U.S. sanc­tions cut off its ac­cess to hard cur­ren­cy and West­ern banks. He was ar­rest­ed in 2020 on fed­er­al charges of mon­ey laun­der­ing while trav­el­ing from Venezuela to Iran to ne­go­ti­ate oil deals help­ing both coun­tries cir­cum­vent sanc­tions.

The DEA records al­so in­di­cate agents’ in­ter­est in Ro­dríguez’s pos­si­ble in­volve­ment in al­leged­ly cor­rupt deals be­tween the gov­ern­ment and Omar Nas­sif-Sru­ji, the broth­er of her long­time ro­man­tic part­ner, Yussef Nas­sif. Nas­sif-Sru­ji and Nas­sif did not re­spond to emails and text mes­sages seek­ing com­ment.

Com­pa­nies reg­is­tered by the two broth­ers in Hong Kong re­ceived more than $650 mil­lion in Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment con­tracts be­tween 2017 and 2019 to im­port food and dial­y­sis med­i­cine, ac­cord­ing to copies of the con­tracts ob­tained in 2021 by Venezue­lan in­ves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism out­let Ar­man­do.in­fo.

Tak­en to­geth­er, the DEA in­ves­ti­ga­tions un­der­score how pow­er has long been ex­er­cised in Venezuela, which is ranked as the world’s third most cor­rupt coun­try by Trans­paren­cy In­ter­na­tion­al. For Ro­dríguez, they al­so rep­re­sent some­thing of a ra­zor-sharp sword over her head, breath­ing life to Trump’s threat soon af­ter Maduro’s ouster that she would “pay a very big price, prob­a­bly big­ger than Maduro” if she didn’t fall in line. The pres­i­dent added that he want­ed her to pro­vide the U.S. “to­tal ac­cess” to the coun­try’s vast oil re­serves and oth­er nat­ur­al re­sources.

“Just be­ing a leader in a high­ly cor­rupt­ed regime for over a decade makes it log­i­cal that she is a pri­or­i­ty tar­get for in­ves­ti­ga­tion,” said David Smilde, a Tu­lane Uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor who has stud­ied Venezuela for three decades. “She sure­ly knows this, and it gives the U.S. gov­ern­ment lever­age over her. She may fear that if she does not do as the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion de­mands, she could end up with an in­dict­ment like Maduro.”

Mus­t­ian re­port­ed from New York.

This sto­ry is part of an on­go­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween The As­so­ci­at­ed Press and FRONT­LINE (PBS) that in­cludes an up­com­ing doc­u­men­tary.

By JIM MUS­T­IAN, JOSHUA GOOD­MAN and ER­IC TUCK­ER

WASH­ING­TON (AP)