WASHINGTON (AP) — When President Donald Trump announced the daring capture of Nicolas Maduro to face drug-trafficking charges in the U.S., he portrayed the powerful vice president and longtime ally as America’s preferred partner in stabilizing Venezuela amid a drug, corruption and economic crisis.
The cloud of suspicion that had long surrounded Delsey Rodriguez before she became acting president of the embattled nation earlier this month was left unexplained.
In fact, Rodriguez has been on the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s radar for years and was even labeled a “priority target” in 2022, a DEA reservation for suspects believed to have “significant influence” in the drug trade, according to records obtained by the Associated Press and more than half of U.S. law enforcement officials.
The DEA has amassed an extensive intelligence file on Rodríguez dating to at least 2018, records show, listing his known associates and charges ranging from drug trafficking to gold smuggling. A confidential informant told the DEA in early 2021 that records showed Rodriguez was using hotels at the Caribbean resort of Isla Margarita “as a front to launder money.” As recently as last year he was linked to Maduro’s alleged bag man, Alex Saab, who was arrested by US authorities in 2020 on money laundering charges.
The US government has never publicly accused Rodriguez of any criminal wrongdoing. Especially for Maduro’s inner circle, he is not among more than a dozen current Venezuelan officials accused of drug trafficking alongside the ousted president.
Rodriguez’s name has appeared in about a dozen DEA investigations, many of which are ongoing, involving agents in field offices from Paraguay and Ecuador to Phoenix and New York, the AP has learned. AP could not determine the specific focus of each investigation.
Three current and former DEA agents who reviewed the records at the AP’s request said they have had an intense interest in Rodriguez since most of his tenure as vice president, which began in 2018. They were not authorized to discuss DEA investigations and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Records reviewed by the AP do not make clear why Rodriguez 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 being labeled will not result in criminal prosecution.
“She was growing, so it’s not surprising that she would become a high-priority target with her role,” said Kurt Lunkenheimer, a former federal prosecutor in Miami who has handled many cases related to Venezuela. “The point is that when people talk about you and you become a high-priority target, there’s a difference between that and the evidence that supports the prosecution.”
Venezuela’s communications ministry did not respond to emails seeking comment.
The DEA and the US Department of Justice also did not respond to requests for comment. Asked if the president trusted Rodriguez, the White House referred to the AP Trump’s “very good conversation” he had with the acting president on Wednesday, a day before he met with CIA Director John Ratcliffe in Caracas.
Soon after Maduro’s capture, Trump began praising Rodriguez — calling him a “terrible person” this past week — in close contact with officials in Washington, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
The DEA’s interest in Rodriguez comes as Trump seeks to install him as a steward of U.S. interests to navigate Maduro’s volatile post in Venezuela, said Steve Dudley, co-director of Insight Crime, a think tank focused on organized crime in the U.S.
“The current Venezuelan government is a criminal-hybrid regime. The only way you get into a position of power in the regime is to, at the very least, encourage criminal activity,” said Dudley, who has researched Venezuela for years. “It’s not a bug in the system. It’s the system.”
Those sentiments were echoed by opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who met with Trump at the White House on Thursday to push for more US support for Venezuelan democracy.
“The American justice system has enough information about him,” Machado said, referring to Rodriguez. “His profile is very clear.”
Rodriguez, 56, worked her way to the pinnacle of power in Venezuela as a loyal ally of Maduro, with whom she shares deep-seated leftist leanings stemming from the death of her socialist father in police custody when she was 7. Despite blaming the U.S. for her father’s death, she served on the U.S. Investment Court as secretary of state during the first Trump administration and later as vice president, recruiting lobbyists close to Trump and ordering a state oil company to donate $500,000 to his inaugural committee.
The charm offensive flopped when Trump, at Rubio’s urging, pressed Maduro to hold free and fair elections. In September 2018,The White House endorsed Rodriguez, describing him as key to Maduro’s grip on power and his ability to “consolidate his authoritarian regime.” He was also banned by the European Union earlier.
But those charges focused on his 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 high levels. 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 managing partner at Eliseus Intelligence, a specialist investigative firm. “Delsey Rodriguez has been part of this criminal enterprise.”
DEA records seen by the AP provide an unprecedented glimpse of the agency’s interest in Rodriguez. Much of it was run by the agency’s elite Special Operations Division, the same Virginia-based unit that worked with prosecutors in Manhattan to indict Maduro.
One archive cites an unnamed confidential informant linking Rodriguez to Margarita Island hotels allegedly used as fronts to launder money. The AP has been unable to independently confirm the information.
The United States has long considered the resort island northeast of the Venezuelan mainland a strategic hub for drug-trafficking routes to the Caribbean and Europe. Many traffickers have been arrested or harbored over the years, including representatives of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán’s Sinaloa cartel.
The records also indicate that the feds were looking into Rodriguez’s involvement in government contracts awarded to Maduro aide Saab — an investigation that continues after President Joe Biden pardoned him in 2023 as part of a prisoner swap for Americans imprisoned in Venezuela.
The Colombian businessman became one of Venezuela’s top fixers after US sanctions cut off the hard currency and its access to Western banks. He was arrested in 2020 on federal charges of money laundering while traveling from Venezuela to Iran to negotiate oil deals that would help both countries lift sanctions.
In an unrelated matter, DEA records also indicate agents’ interest in possible involvement in alleged corrupt deals between Rodriguez’s government and Omar Nassif-Sruji, a relative of Rodriguez’s longtime romantic partner Youssef Nassif.
Nassif-Sruji did not respond to emails and text messages seeking comment and a lawyer for Nassif denied his client was involved in any wrongdoing, pointing out that he has not been charged with any crime.
“He has the utmost respect and confidence in the acting president’s vision for Venezuela and believes that he is a true patriot who dedicated his entire life to the well-being of the Venezuelan people,” said the lawyer, Jihad M. Smiley said in a statement. “Claims that Mr. Nassif is currently involved in any untoward relationship with the acting president are false.”
The DEA investigation underscores the longstanding abuse of power in Venezuela, ranked by Transparency International as the third most corrupt country in the world. For Rodriguez, they represent a sharp sword over his head, breathing life into Trump’s threat after Maduro’s ouster that he will “pay a very big price, maybe even bigger than Maduro” if he doesn’t fall in line. The president added that he wants to give America “full access” to the country’s vast oil reserves and other natural resources.
“Being the leader of a highly corrupt regime for more than a decade makes it logical that he is a priority target for research,” said David Smilde, a Tulane University professor who has studied Venezuela for three decades. “He certainly knows this, and it gives the US government an advantage over him. If he doesn’t do what the Trump administration demands, he may be afraid that he could be indicted like Maduro.”
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Mustian reported from New York.
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Contact AP’s global investigative team at investigative@ap.org or https://www.ap.org/tips/
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This story is part of an ongoing collaboration between The Associated Press and FRONTLINE (PBS) that includes an upcoming documentary.
