United States Department of Justice has retracted the allegation that Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro was in charge of the “Cartel de los Soles” an alleged organisation that many US govt platforms said is a narco terror entity, reported The New York Times. Last year, the Trump administration propagated the claim while preparing the foundation for overthrowing Maduro from office.
Prosecutors have dropped the notion that Cartel de los Soles was a real organisation. It, in fact, alludes to a “culture of corruption” and a “patronage system” driven by drug money, according to the updated indictment, NYT reported. However, they continued to accuse Maduro of taking part in a drug trafficking scheme.
Unbelievable. After months of propaganda claiming Maduro is the head of the dangerous drug-smuggling cartel, the US government has admitted it was all a ruse in order to kidnap a sitting head of state. pic.twitter.com/FgniUNrPiL— Alan MacLeod (@AlanRMacLeod) January 6, 2026
The charge originated from the Justice Department’s 2020 grand jury indictment of Maduro. The Treasury Department labelled Cartel de los Soles a terrorist group in July 2025, using the same terminology. Trump’s national security adviser and secretary of state Marco Rubio gave the State Department instructions to follow suit in November.
However, analysts in Latin American crime and drug-related problems have stated that it is actually a colloquial word for politicians corrupted by drug money that was created by the Venezuelan media in the 1990s. Additionally, the Justice Department issued a revised indictment that seemed to implicitly accept this assertion after Maduro was apprehended.
The current indictment referenced the Cartel de los Soles twice and alleged that Maduro, like his predecessor, President Hugo Chavez, was actively involved in it, as well as maintained and protected this patronage structure. On the other hand, the previous indictment mentioned the group 32 times and named Maduro as its head.
The new indictment conveyed that proceeds from drug trafficking and protection of drug trafficking partners “flow to corrupt rank-and-file civilian, military and intelligence officials, who operate in a patronage system run by those at the top – referred to as the Cartel de los Soles or Cartel of the Suns, a reference to the sun insignia affixed to the uniforms of high-ranking Venezuelan military officials.”
Elizabeth Dickinson highlighted that the new indictment’s depiction of Cartel de los Soles is “exactly accurate to reality,” in contrast to the 2020 version. She is the deputy director for Latin America at the International Crisis Group. Elizabeth expressed, “I think the new indictment gets it right, but the designations are still far from reality. Designations don’t have to be proved in court, and that’s the difference. Clearly, they knew they could not prove it in court.”
Meanwhile, in an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on 4th January, a day after the updated indictment was made public, Rubio repeatedly defined Cartel de los Soles as an actual organisation headed by Maduro. The transcription of the interview was shared by the State Department.
He declared, “We will continue to reserve the right to take strikes against drug boats that are bringing drugs toward the United States that are being operated by transnational criminal organisations including the Cartel de los Soles. Of course, their leader, the leader of that cartel, is now in US custody and facing US justice in the Southern District of New York. And that’s Nicolás Maduro.”
Cartel de los Soles has never been featured in the Drug Enforcement Administration’s yearly National Drug Threat Assessment, which lists significant trafficking organisations. The group has also never been mentioned in the annual World Drug Report published by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, as per reports.
