The U.S. Department of Justice’s prosecution of Nicolás Maduro and his associates has undergone a profound transformation. What began in 2020 as a more narrowly tailored narco-terrorism indictment has evolved, through a superseding indictment unsealed in early 2026 (S4 11 Cr. 205). As a result, it has turned into a sweeping case that reframes the Venezuelan government itself as a “captured state”—a systemic hub of corruption that has enabled narco-terrorism, massive cocaine trafficking, and partnerships with multiple designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs) and transnational criminal groups.
This strategic pivot not only strengthens the legal case against Maduro; it also provides a stark, real-world illustration of the urgent regional crisis addressed by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) in Resolution No. 1/26, “Organized Crime and Human Rights in the Americas,” approved on February 28, 2026.
The 2020 Indictment
The original 2020 charges focused on a specific conspiracy between the so-called “Cartel de los Soles” (a network of Venezuelan military and civilian officials) and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a designated FTO at the time. Venezuelan officials allegedly provided protection for cocaine shipments in exchange for FARC support. This framing, while ambitious, proved vulnerable when the U.S. delisted the FARC as an FTO in November 2021 following Colombia’s peace process. Successor groups (FARC-EP and Segunda Marquetalia) remained designated, but the original bilateral nexus risked collapse under statutory scrutiny.
The 2026 Superseding Indictment
The 2026 indictment solves this vulnerability by expanding the conspiracy into a “multilateral ecosystem.” Venezuela is no longer portrayed as merely allied with one group but as a central platform facilitating partnerships with:
– FARC successors (FARC-EP and Segunda Marquetalia, still designated FTOs)
– ELN (National Liberation Army, designated FTO)
– Tren de Aragua (TdA, designated FTO in February 2025)
– Mexican cartels, including the Sinaloa Cartel and Zetas/Cartel del Noreste (also designated FTOs in 2025)
The indictment draws on an expanded factual record spanning 1999–2025. It emphasizes systemic corruption across Venezuelan institutions—including the military, judiciary, and state oil company PDVSA—as the engine enabling drug trafficking and material support for terrorist organizations. This “captured state” theory aligns with U.S. policy viewing Venezuela as a narco-state enterprise and makes the case far more resilient to geopolitical shifts. Additionally, it is less difficult to prove institutional corruption—based on insider testimony and documented cases—than to demonstrate the existence of a formal cartel.
Insider Evidence and Pinkerton
The indictment is based on statements from two high-level members of the criminal network, which will serve as compelling evidence from the inside.
– Hugo “El Pollo” Carvajal Barrios, former Director of Military Intelligence, pleaded guilty in June 2025 to narco-terrorism, drug trafficking, and weapons charges. His confession confirms the structure and state-sponsored nature of the Cartel de los Soles criminal network.
– Cliver Alcalá Cordones, former Major General, admitted in 2024 to supplying military-grade weapons (e.g., RPGs) from Venezuelan stockpiles to the FARC. This directly satisfies the “material support” and “pecuniary value” elements required under 21 U.S.C. § 960a.
The new indictment further provides a basis to leverage the Pinkerton doctrine (Pinkerton v. United States, 1946) to hold Maduro liable for the foreseeable acts of his co-conspirators. In a conspiracy of this scale, leaders are accountable for substantive crimes (weapons transfers, route protection, ton-scale cocaine shipments) committed in furtherance of the agreement—without needing proof of personal participation in every act. This doctrine, combined with the insiders’ statements, dismantles potential “rogue actor” defenses (i.e. that wrongful acts were committed by an agent acting outside the scope of his capacity and State policy, and without the knowledge or approval of his superiors), and ties the entire captured-state enterprise directly to Maduro.
Organized Crime and Human Rights in the Americas (IACHR Resolution No. 1/26)
The timing and substance of the 2026 U.S. v. Maduro case make it a textbook example of the very phenomenon the new IACHR Resolution No. 1/26 seeks to address. Approved just weeks after the superseding indictment’s unsealing, the resolution warns that organized crime is “not only a scourge in terms of security, but also a structural manifestation of inequality” across the Americas. It highlights organized crime as one of the main causes of forced displacement in the region, whose violence affects the general population, with particular and disproportionate impact on individuals and communities in situations of vulnerability, and historical and structural discrimination.
The Maduro prosecution embodies these concerns in several critical ways.
State capture
The resolution stresses the need for states to protect populations under their jurisdiction from organized crime. Here, the indictment against Maduro alleges the opposite—state institutions were allegedly repurposed to enable crime rather than fighting it. Corruption across the military, judiciary, and PDVSA, the use of state aircraft and diplomatic passports for trafficking, and the alleged involvement of the “First Family” (Maduro’s wife Cilia Flores and son Nicolás Maduro Guerra) illustrate how institutional capture turns a sovereign government into a criminal enterprise, which has also been responsible for the violation of the human rights of its citizens and of the legitimate interests of the countries of the region.
Transnational and systemic impact
The resolution emphasizes organized crime’s regional reach and its roots in inequality. The “multilateral ecosystem” described in the indictment—linking Venezuelan state actors with ELN, Tren de Aragua, FARC successors, and Mexican cartels—demonstrates precisely the cross-border networks that fuel violence, displacement, and human rights abuses throughout the Americas.
High-level accountability and systemic dismantlement.
The case against Maduro operationalizes the kind of high-level accountability the IACHR urges. It moves beyond low-level arrests to dismantle the systemic patronage networks that perpetuate inequality and impunity—the very structural problems the IACHR resolution identifies as driving organized crime’s assault on human rights.
In short, the superseding indictment is not merely a narcotics prosecution. It puts some of the Resolution 1/26 core arguments into practice in a precedent-setting case.
A precedent-setting case for the region: state organized crime
The 2026 superseding indictment has transformed the 2020 case into a robust precedent-setting prosecution of systemic state-sponsored, i.e. state organized crime.
By broadening the conspiracy, the prosecution has built a resilient legal framework capable of withstanding geopolitical challenges. At the same time, the case demonstrates how the “captured state” model of organized crime inflicts profound, structural harm across the Americas—precisely the crisis the IACHR has called on all states to confront.
As the proceedings move forward, they will offer not only the prospect of justice in one of the hemisphere’s most complex transnational cases but also a model for how the rule of law can address the intersection of authoritarian capture, organized crime, and human rights violations in the Americas of today.
Jan-Michael Simon is Senior Researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security, and Law, specializing in comparative criminal law, criminal policy, and international law.
Photo credit: AP/Elizabeth Williams.