Nov 13 Venezuelan First Lady Cilia Flores is so well-known for helping relatives get government jobs that the arrest of two of her nephews on us drug charges has spawned a joke in opposition circles: “Not all of her family can work in the legislature”.
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The men are both nephews of Cilia Flores, the influential wife of Maduro, the person said.
They were flown out of the country later that day accompanied by agents from the US Drug Enforcement Administration, the official said.
Flores, who Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro frequently refers to as the “first combatant”, is running for Congress in next month’s national parliamentary elections as one of the ruling United Socialist Party candidates, and also hosts a weekly TV show on Sundays. The front pages of two leading newspapers, which have softened their criticism of the government since recent changes of ownerships, made no mention of Flores’ nephews.
Earlier this year, a former bodyguard to deceased Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez defected to America and began cooperating with federal drug agents.
Maduro accused Western states of manipulating the human rights issue to pressure Venezuela.
The State Department has called Venezuela a “preferred” route for drug traffickers sending their shipments to the USA and Western Europe.
She is expected to be with the president on Thursday as he addresses the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva.
The five-page indictment lists 29-year-old Efraín Antonio Campo Flores and 30-year-old Franqui Francisco Flores-de Freitas as co-conspirators in an October plot to smuggle five kilograms of cocaine into the us via Honduras. On Thursday morning, Nicolas tweeted: “The Fatherland will follow its path, neither strikes, nor imperialist ambushes, will do anything to the folks of the liberators, we have one destiny….To triumph…”
Michael Vigil, a former head of the DEA’s worldwide operations who was briefed by USA authorities on the lengthy undercover operation, said both men were carrying diplomatic passports when they arrived in Haiti even though they do not have diplomatic immunity, the AP reports.
“Her influence over the president is clear, as well as the political respect Maduro has for her, beyond ideological questions or their marital relationship”, said Evans, who called Flores “the most powerful woman” in the Chavismo movement. The men were supposedly in the middle of smuggling cocaine approximately about 1,700 lbs. into the US when they were apprehended in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, where their plane landed.
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Caracas routinely denies allegations that it is involved in drug trafficking, characterizing them as efforts to destabilize its leftist government.
