Bribes, cocaine flights & power: US charges President Maduro’s wife Cilia Flores over drug trafficking bribes

Cilia Flores, the wife of Venezuela's captured president, Nicolas Maduro, has been charged by US prosecutors with accepting bribes to facilitate drug trafficking and manipulate the anti-drug office of the country. She is also accused of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in 2007 to arrange a meeting between a major drug trafficker and the director of Venezuela's National Anti-Drug Office, Nestor Reverol Torres.

The trafficker later agreed to pay monthly bribes to the director, along with around $100,000 for each flight carrying cocaine to ensure safe transit. Investigators allege that a portion of these payments was channelled to Flores. Reverol Torres was subsequently charged with narcotics offences in New York in 2015 and remains at large.

The case also draws attention to alleged drug links involving Flores’s family. In 2015, confidential US recordings captured her nephews discussing plans to move “multi-hundred-kilogram” cocaine shipments from Maduro’s presidential hangar.

During those conversations, they reportedly said they were “at war” with the United States. The nephews were convicted in 2017 and sentenced to 18 years in prison for conspiring to traffic large quantities of cocaine into the US, though they were freed in 2022 as part of a prisoner exchange involving seven Americans.

Maduro has been charged along with his wife, son and three others. The indictment includes allegations of narco-terrorism conspiracy, conspiracy to import cocaine, possession of machine guns and destructive devices, and conspiracy to possess such weapons.

Who is Cilia Flores?

Cilia Flores, a lawyer from a humble background, rose through former president Hugo Chávez’s socialist movement in the 1990s to become a prominent lawmaker. She and Maduro, partners since the late 1990s and married in 2013, played a central role in strengthening Maduro’s hold on power.

Flores maintained immense behind-the-scenes authority even after leaving a formal government position in 2013. She is now being alleged by the US prosecutors that, along with her husband and son, Flores has misused her political power to facilitate drug trafficking.