They are indicted with conspiracy to smuggle five kilos (11 pounds) of a controlled substance into the United States that USA prosecutors said in the indictment contained “a detectable amount of cocaine”.
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The two men are nephews of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s wife, Cilia Flores, and the arrest could lead to new tensions between the USA and Venezuela, which have been at odds for years.
They were immediately flown to NY and will appear before a federal judge Thursday, the reports said.
A few analysts said that the arrests could play into Mr Maduro’s hands, because he frequently styles himself as defending Venezuela against outside interference.
Earlier this year, Dino Bouterse, the son of Suriname’s president, Desi Bouterse, was sentenced in federal court in NY City to 195 months in prison, also for narcotics trafficking, along with firearms offences and attempting to provide material support and resources to Hezbollah, a designated terrorist organization.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the men had contacted a DEA informant in Honduras and asked for help transporting the cocaine.
Venezuelan media reports that Campos Flores is the son of a deceased sister of the First Lady Flores, and was partly raised by the presidential couple as their godson.
Maduro, who referred to Campo Flores as his stepson and categorically denied the accusations leveled against the men, slammed the arrest, as he spoke at a meeting of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland on Thursday, El Nacional reported. During his speech, he accused the USA of wishing his country ill, but did not directly comment on the arrests.
Nephews of Cilia Flores arrested in Haiti on charges of conspiring to smuggle 800kg of coke into the US. Even many government critics were surprised because they tend to see Maduro, the hand-picked successor to late President Hugo Chavez, as incompetent but not especially corrupt.
The case is a major embarrassment for Mr Maduro, three weeks before the ruling Socialist Party heads towards parliamentary elections.
“Opposition politicians have been arbitrarily arrested, then prosecuted and convicted on politically motivated charges, and barred from running for office in the legislative elections scheduled for December”, Human Rights Watch added in a statement.
U.S. counternarcotics experts have long said that large amounts of cocaine transit from Colombia through Venezuela on to Europe and the US.
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The U.S. Treasury has nine Venezuelan officials on a “kingpin” list, which bars those suspected of involvement in large-scale drug trafficking from the US financial system.
