Nicolas Maduro has been discovered responsible of drug trafficking and terrorism within the US | Credit score: StringerAL/Shutterstock
Indicted in 2020 on US federal costs of narcoterrorism and conspiracy to import cocaine, the Trump Administration doubled the bounty on Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on Thursday, August eighth, a number of information shops reported.
The US accuses Maduro of being one of many world’s largest drug traffickers and of working with cartels to flood the US with fentanyl-laced cocaine. “Beneath President Trump’s management, Maduro won’t escape justice, and he will likely be held accountable for his despicable crimes,” Pam Bondi, the lawyer common, stated on Thursday in a video assertion saying the reward.
Bondi stated, “Maduro makes use of international terrorist organisations like TdA … to deliver lethal violence to our nation … He is without doubt one of the largest narcotraffickers on the earth and a risk to our nationwide safety.”
Maduro was indicted in Manhattan federal courtroom in 2020, throughout the first Trump presidency, together with a number of shut allies, on federal costs of drug-trafficking-related terrorism and conspiracy to import cocaine, in accordance to the Guardian.
Initially, the US provided a $15 million reward for his arrest. With Joe Biden as president, the bounty was raised to $25 million, the identical reward provided for Osama bin Laden in 2001, after the September 11 assaults.
‘We’re not shocked’ by this ‘determined distraction’
Maduro shrugs off the bounty. He by no means leaves Venezuela, the place he has remained probably the most highly effective determine within the nation for over a decade. In 2024, the European Union and several other Latin American governments condemned Maduro‘s reelection as a sham.
Venezuelan Overseas Minister Yvan Gil stated the brand new reward was “pathetic” and labelled it “political propaganda”.
“We’re not shocked, coming from whom it comes from,” Gil stated, accusing Bondi of making an attempt a “determined distraction” from headlines associated to backlash over the dealing with of the case of intercourse offender Jeffrey Epstein.