Sun Jan 04 10:57:26 UTC 2026: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
U.S. Indicts Venezuelan First Lady Cilia Flores on Drug Trafficking Charges
WASHINGTON D.C. – U.S. prosecutors have unsealed an indictment against Cilia Flores, the wife of captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, alleging her involvement in a sprawling drug trafficking operation. The charges accuse Flores of accepting bribes in 2007 to facilitate drug trafficking and manipulate Venezuela’s anti-drug office.
According to the indictment, Flores accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars to arrange a meeting between a major drug trafficker and Nestor Reverol Torres, then-director of Venezuela’s National Anti-Drug Office. Subsequently, the trafficker allegedly paid Torres monthly bribes and $100,000 per cocaine-laden flight in exchange for safe passage. Prosecutors allege some of these funds were funneled to Flores. Torres was later charged with narcotics offenses in New York in 2015 and remains a fugitive.
The indictment further implicates Flores’ family in the drug trade. In 2015, her nephews were recorded by U.S. sources discussing sending “multi-hundred-kilogram cocaine shipments” from Maduro’s presidential hangar. The nephews were later sentenced in 2017 to 18 years in prison for conspiracy to traffic cocaine into the U.S., but were released in 2022 as part of a prisoner swap.
Flores is charged alongside her husband, son, and three others. Maduro is facing charges including narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy, and weapons offenses.
Flores, a lawyer who rose through Hugo Chavez’s socialist movement, is accused of leveraging her political power, even after leaving formal government posts in 2013, to facilitate drug trafficking. This indictment marks a significant escalation in U.S. efforts to combat drug trafficking and corruption within the Venezuelan government.
First Piper 