Hugo Armando Carvajal Barrios, 65, once held the keys to Venezuela’s military intelligence apparatus during the presidency of Hugo Chávez and briefly under his successor Nicolás Maduro. But on June 25, he stood before a US federal judge and admitted guilt to four serious criminal counts, including narco-terrorism conspiracy, conspiracy to import cocaine and firearms-related charges tied to the trafficking.
“There are powerful foreign government officials who conspire to flood the United States with drugs that kill and debilitate.”
The case marks a rare conviction of a senior foreign official on narco-terrorism charges and highlights the extent to which the US views transnational drug conspiracies not only as organized crime but as national security threats—especially when alleged state actors are involved. Carvajal’s guilty plea also brings long-sought legal closure to a saga that spanned three presidencies, two continents and more than a decade of legal and diplomatic wrangling.
Prosecutors allege Carvajal, a former major general, helped orchestrate a state-sponsored drug operation that partnered with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC)—a group then designated as a terrorist organization by Washington—to manufacture and smuggle massive quantities of cocaine into the US.
Federal court documents accuse Carvajal of coordinating the shipment of 5.6 tons of cocaine from Venezuela to Mexico in 2006, ultimately destined for US markets. Prosecutors further claim Carvajal was a senior member of the so-called “Cártel de los Soles”—a loose network of Venezuelan military and government officials who allegedly used their positions to profit from the cocaine trade and, in the words of the US indictment, to use “cocaine as a weapon against the United States due to the adverse effects of the drug on individual users.”
“The deeply troubling reality is that there are powerful foreign government officials who conspire to flood the United States with drugs that kill and debilitate,” said Jay Clayton, the interim US attorney in Manhattan, in a statement released after Carvajal’s plea.
The case against Carvajal has unfolded over more than a decade, with the US indicting him in 2011 and formally requesting his extradition in 2014. But Carvajal eluded American custody for years, thanks in part to his political ties and strategic asylum claims. After publicly breaking with President Maduro in 2019 and backing the US-recognized opposition leader Juan Guaidó, Carvajal fled Venezuela by boat and resurfaced in Spain, where he lived until his 2021 arrest in Madrid.
His extradition was delayed by a lengthy legal fight, including an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights. Spain’s High Court finally ordered his extradition in July 2023, after finding no legal barrier to transfer him to American authorities.
Carvajal was an influential figure in Chávez’s inner circle, having first risen to prominence as a participant in the failed 1992 military coup that catapulted Chávez to political fame. Carvajal’s subsequent fall from grace began with his break from Maduro’s government and intensified as Washington ramped up its crackdown on alleged narco-corruption within Venezuela’s security services.
Though Carvajal denied the allegations for years—claiming in interviews and court filings that the charges were politically motivated—he reversed course in court just days before his trial was set to begin. The timing and terms of any cooperation agreement, if one exists, have not been publicly disclosed.
According to the Department of Justice, Carvajal now faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 50 years in prison, with sentencing scheduled for October.
His plea closes one of the most high-profile cases in the US government’s long-running campaign against narco-political networks in Latin America—especially those allegedly operating with the blessing or participation of state officials.
But it may also open a new chapter. “Carvajal’s straight-up guilty plea, without any promise of leniency, could be part of a gamble to win credit down the line for cooperating with US efforts against a top foreign adversary,” according to The Associated Press.
The news report suggests prosecutors are expected to mine any intelligence Carvajal might provide about Venezuela’s broader complicity, as his case moves beyond the courtroom and into the broader effort to expose transnational crime.
