When President Donald Trump announced bold capture As Nicolas Maduro faces drug trafficking charges in the United States, he has described the strongman’s vice president and longtime aide as the U.S.’s preferred partner in stabilizing Venezuela amid the scourge of drugs, corruption and economic chaos.
Unspoken is the lingering cloud of doubt Delcy Rodriguez Earlier this month, she became the embattled country’s acting president.
In fact, Rodriguez has been on the DEA’s radar for years and was even labeled a “priority target” in 2022, a designation the DEA reserves for suspects believed to have a “significant impact” on the drug trade, according to records obtained by The Associated Press and six current and former U.S. law enforcement officials.
Records show the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has assembled a detailed intelligence dossier on Rodriguez dating back to at least 2018, documenting her known associates and charges ranging from drug trafficking to gold smuggling. Records show a confidential informant told the DEA in early 2021 that Rodriguez used hotels in the Caribbean resort of Margarita Island “as a front for money laundering.” As recently as last year, she was linked to Maduro’s so-called bag men, Alex SzaboU.S. authorities arrested him in 2020 on money laundering charges.
The U.S. government has never publicly accused Rodriguez of any criminal conduct. Significantly to Maduro’s inner circle, she is not one of the dozen or so current Venezuelan officials accused of drug trafficking along with the ousted president.
The Associated Press has learned that Rodriguez’s name appears in nearly a dozen Drug Enforcement Administration investigations, several of which are ongoing and involve agents from field offices ranging from Paraguay and Ecuador to Phoenix and New York. The AP was unable to determine the specific focus of each investigation.
Three current and former DEA agents who were asked to view the records by The Associated Press said they took a keen interest in Rodriguez throughout much of her tenure as vice president, which began in 2018. They were not authorized to discuss the DEA investigation and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Records reviewed by The Associated Press do not clearly state 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 having the label does not necessarily lead to criminal charges.
“Her stature is rising, so it’s not surprising that she might be a high-priority target,” said Kurt Lunkenheimer, a former federal prosecutor in Miami who has handled several Venezuela-related cases. “The problem is, when people talk about you and you become a high-priority target, there’s a difference between that and the evidence that supports a prosecution.”
Venezuela’s Communications Ministry did not respond to an email seeking comment.
The Drug Enforcement Administration and the U.S. Department of Justice also did not respond to requests for comment. Asked whether the president trusted Rodriguez, the White House pointed to Trump’s earlier remarks that he had a “very good conversation” with the acting president a day earlier on Wednesday. She met with CIA Director John Ratcliffe in Caracas.
Shortly after Maduro’s arrest, Trump began lavishly praising Rodriguez — calling her a “wonderful person” last week — and was in close contact with officials in Washington, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Steve Dudley, co-director of InSight Crime, a think tank focused on organized crime in the Americas, said the Drug Enforcement Administration is interested in Rodriguez despite Trump’s attempts to appoint her as a steward of U.S. interests in response to instability in post-Maduro Venezuela.
“The current Venezuelan government is a criminal and criminal regime. The only way to gain power in this regime is at least to encourage criminal activity,” said Dudley, who has been investigating Venezuela for years. “It’s not a bug in the system. It’s the system.”
Opposition leader Maria Collina Machado echoed the sentiment. Meeting with Trump Thursday at the White House to push for more U.S. support for Venezuelan democracy.
“The American justice system has enough information about her,” Machado said, referring to Rodriguez. “Her profile is clear.”
Rodriguez, 56, rose to the pinnacle of power in Venezuela as a loyal Maduro aide. She shares deep left-wing leanings with Maduro, stemming from the death of her socialist father in police custody when she was seven. Although she blamed the United States for her father’s death, she worked to secure U.S. investment during Trump’s first administration while serving as foreign minister and later vice president, hiring lobbyists close to Trump and even ordering state-owned oil companies to contribute $500,000 to Trump’s inaugural committee.
The charm offensive failed when Trump, at Rubio’s urging, pressured Maduro to hold free and fair elections. September 2018,White House sanctions Rodriguezcalling her key to Maduro’s ability to hold on to power and “consolidate his authoritarian rule.” She also Previously subject to EU sanctions.
But the charges focus on her threat to Venezuelan democracy rather than alleged involvement in corruption.
“Venezuela is a failed state with support at the highest levels for terrorism, corruption, human rights abuses and drug trafficking. This analysis has nothing to do with politics.” said Rob Zachariasiewicz, a long-time DEA agent who led the investigation of senior Venezuelan officials and is now a managing partner at the professional investigation firm Elicius Intelligence. “Delsey Rodriguez was part of this criminal enterprise.”
Drug Enforcement Administration records reviewed by The Associated Press provide an unprecedented look at the agency’s interest in Rodriguez. Much of it was driven by the agency’s elite Special Operations Division, which is based in Virginia and has worked with Manhattan prosecutors to prosecute Maduro.
One of the records cited an unnamed confidential informant who said Rodriguez had ties to Margarita Island hotels that were allegedly used as fronts for money laundering. The Associated Press could not independently confirm that information.
The United States has long viewed the resort island northeast of mainland Venezuela as a strategic hub for drug trafficking routes to the Caribbean and Europe. Over the years, many traffickers have been arrested or sheltered here, including representatives of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzman’s Sinaloa cartel.
Records also show the federal government is investigating Rodriguez’s involvement in awarding government contracts to Maduro ally Saab — even after President Joe Biden pardoned him in 2023 as part of a prisoner exchange for Americans imprisoned in Venezuela.
The Colombian businessman became one of Venezuela’s top manipulators as U.S. sanctions cut off Venezuela’s access to hard currency and Western banks. He was arrested in 2020 on federal money laundering charges after traveling from Venezuela to Iran to negotiate oil deals that helped both countries circumvent sanctions.
In an unrelated matter, DEA records also indicate that agents were interested in Rodriguez’s possible involvement in allegedly corrupt dealings between the government and Omar Nassif-Srouj, a relative of Rodriguez’s longtime love Yusef Nassif.
Nassif-Sruji did not respond to emails and text messages seeking comment. Nassif’s lawyer denied that his client was involved in any nefarious activity and noted that he had not been charged with any crime.
“He has the utmost respect and confidence in the acting president’s vision for Venezuela and believes she is a true patriot who has devoted her life to the advancement of the Venezuelan people,” attorney Jihad M. Smelly said in a statement. “The suggestion that Mr. Nassif currently has any inappropriate relationship with the acting president is false.”
Taken together, the DEA investigation highlights how power has long been exercised in Venezuela, a country ranked by Transparency International as the third most corrupt country in the world. For Rodriguez, they also represent a sharp sword over her head, lending life to Trump’s threat shortly after Maduro’s ouster that she would “pay a very big price, probably even bigger than Maduro” if she didn’t follow the rules. The president added that he wanted her to provide the United States with “full access” to the country’s vast oil reserves and other natural resources.
“Just being the leader of a highly corrupt regime for more than a decade makes it logical that she would be a priority target for investigation,” said David Smilder, a Tulane University professor who has studied Venezuela for three decades. “She certainly knows this, and it gives the U.S. government leverage over her. She may be concerned that if she doesn’t do what the Trump administration wants, she could end up being prosecuted like Maduro.”
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Mastian reported from New York.
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Contact AP’s global investigative team: surveys@ap.org or https://www.ap.org/tips/.
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This story is part of an ongoing partnership between The Associated Press and FRONTLINE (PBS) that includes an upcoming documentary.