Venezuela’s socialist regime launched a five-page assertion on Tuesday rejecting President Donald Trump’s willpower designating Venezuela and different international locations as failing to cooperate in efforts to struggle drug trafficking.
Based on the Venezuelan regime, which claimed all through the textual content that different international locations resembling Colombia and Peru are liable for the drug trafficking within the area, all the statements contained within the “imaginary and illegitimate self-designation” are “unfounded and contradict official information from specialised worldwide organizations.”
The U.S. Division of State introduced on Monday that President Trump submitted a Presidential willpower to Congress designating Afghanistan, Bolivia, Burma, Colombia, and Venezuela as “having failed demonstrably through the earlier 12 months” to stick to their obligations below worldwide counternarcotics agreements and to take the efforts required by the 1961 Overseas Help Act to struggle drug trafficking.
The willpower cites socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro’s a number of indictments on narco-terrorism costs and his ongoing main function within the Cartel of the Suns, a world cocaine trafficking operation run by the Venezuelan navy. Presently, america is providing $50 million for info that may result in Maduro’s arrest and/or conviction.
“In Venezuela, the felony regime of indicted drug trafficker Nicolás Maduro leads one of many largest cocaine trafficking networks on this planet, and america will proceed to hunt to carry Maduro and different members of his complicit regime to justice for his or her crimes,” the willpower learn. “We can even goal Venezuelan international terrorist organizations resembling Tren de Aragua and purge them from our nation.”
The State Division printed the willpower hours after President Trump introduced that U.S. navy forces performed a “kinetic strike” in opposition to “positively recognized, terribly violent drug trafficking cartels and narcoterrorists within the SOUTHCOM space of duty.” Trump detailed in a Reality Social submit that the strike occurred “whereas these confirmed narcoterrorists from Venezuela had been in Worldwide Waters transporting unlawful narcotics” headed to america, killing three males on board the vessel.
This week’s navy operation comes days after one other Venezuelan drug-laden vessel was struck in worldwide waters as a part of President Trump’s ongoing efforts to fight Latin American drug cartels in Caribbean worldwide waters and curb the stream of medication coming into america. The strike in opposition to the primary vessel resulted within the dying of 11 members of the Tren de Aragua terrorist group. Maduro, and members of his regime, have repeatedly insisted over the previous weeks that the footage of the primary strike is “pretend.”
President Trump revealed in remarks to reporters on Tuesday {that a} third boat was additionally struck, “however you noticed two,” and known as upon Maduro to cease sending members of the Tren de Aragua terrorist group and medicines into america.
The Presidential declaration seems to have tremendously infuriated the rogue Venezuelan socialist regime, which responded to it in a five-page assertion issued by its Overseas Ministry and printed by Overseas Minister Yván Gil on his official Telegram account “rejecting and repudiating” its contents “like your complete worldwide group and the dignified international locations of Latin America.”
Based on the Maduro regime, the Dedication is “unfounded” and contradicts official information from worldwide organizations — a declare that the Venezuelan regime justified citing studies from the United Nations Workplace on Medicine and Crime (UNODC), by which “Venezuela is licensed as a territory freed from illicit crops.”
“Moreover, it has been duly confirmed that there aren’t any drug cartels or plantations for drug processing in our nation,” the assertion learn. “This info is mirrored within the studies of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) (2024-2025), which don’t determine Venezuela as a producer, distributor, or transit nation for medicine.”
“Venezuela shouldn’t be a producer, trafficker, cultivator, or storage middle for medicine. In conclusion, in accordance with all studies from specialised businesses on this area, our nation shouldn’t be a big participant on this space,” the assertion continued.
The Maduro regime continued by asserting that the cited studies “reaffirm” that cocaine manufacturing basically happens in Colombia, “the place the drug trafficking economic system has been consolidated over time below the safety of varied governments allied with america.” The Venezuelan regime pointed at Peru, claiming that drug manufacturing has been rising because the arrival of “illegitimate” governments following the “coup” in opposition to communist former President Pedro Castillo. Castillo was arrested in 2022 after he tried to dissolve the nation’s Congress and rule by decree.
The Maduro regime claimed within the assertion that its “drug trafficking preventing program” has managed to seize “a minimum of 70 %” of the medicine passing by Venezuelan territory. Citing UNODC studies, it mentioned that drug trafficking cash laundered within the U.S. quantities to 2.7 % of its GDP, pointing at banks with U.S. presence resembling HSBC and Wells Fargo for “admitting their involvement in laundering cash from drug trafficking.”
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