By Staff Writer

When Hugo Armando “El Pollo” Carvajal finally pleaded guilty in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York on 25 June 2025, the former Venezuelan military intelligence chief admitted what US prosecutors had alleged for years: that senior officials inside the Chávez–Maduro regime used cocaine as a weapon against the United States, in partnership with a designated terrorist group, and were prepared to arm that conspiracy with machine guns and explosives.

Now, from a US federal prison cell, Carvajal has gone further. In a letter dated 02 December 2025, addressed to President Donald Trump and circulating in Washington, the man who once ran Venezuela’s military intelligence service accuses Nicolás Maduro’s government of operating as a “narco-terrorist organisation” and offers to cooperate fully with US authorities.

If his allegations are substantiated, they would not only validate years of US warnings about the so-called Cartel de los Soles; they would also connect Maduro’s inner circle to a broader ecosystem of FARC guerrillas, Cuban intelligence, Iranian operatives and Hezbollah facilitators—with direct implications for US homeland security policy.

Carvajal’s trajectory is central to understanding the stakes.

He served as director of Venezuela’s military intelligence (DIM) under Hugo Chávez from 2004 to 2011, and remained close to the security core of the regime under Nicolás Maduro.

In 2020, a US superseding indictment in the Southern District of New York charged Maduro, Carvajal and others with narco-terrorism, cocaine importation and weapons offences, alleging a 20-year conspiracy with FARC to “flood” the United States with cocaine through a network dubbed the Cartel de los Soles.

Extradited from Spain in 2023 after years on the run, Carvajal pleaded guilty in June 2025 to four counts, including narco-terrorism conspiracy and drug trafficking, and now faces a potential life sentence.

US prosecutors describe him as a central architect of a state-embedded cartel that worked hand-in-glove with FARC to ship multi-tonne loads of cocaine towards US cities.

That gives Carvajal enormous credibility and leverage: he is not a peripheral witness, but a former regime insider whose knowledge spans intelligence, military, financial and diplomatic channels.

In his recent letter from federal custody, first reported by the Dallas Express, Carvajal alleges that:

• Maduro and his top generals run the Cartel de los Soles from the presidential palace, using state institutions as cover.
• The network coordinates with Colombia’s FARC and ELN, building on the narco-terror structure already described in US indictments.
• The regime maintains operational links with Cuban intelligence services, which help secure the inner circle and manage foreign influence operations.
• Hezbollah operates inside Venezuela as a partner and beneficiary of this criminal-terrorist architecture, particularly in logistics and finance.
• The government armed and empowered the Tren de Aragua gang as a domestic shock force, then allowed—and encouraged—its members to spread into the United States to engage in extortion, trafficking and violent crime.

Several of these claims map directly onto steps the US government has already taken.

In late November, the US State Department formally designated the Cartel de los Soles as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO), alleging that it is run by Maduro and senior Venezuelan officials and collaborates with Tren de Aragua and Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel.

Separately, the Treasury Department has sanctioned the cartel under terrorism authorities, noting that it has provided material support to Tren de Aragua (TDA) and the Sinaloa Cartel, both now also designated FTOs.

The FTO label does three things that matter for Carvajal’s allegations:

• Criminalises support – Any material support to the cartel, including financial and logistical assistance, becomes a federal terrorism offence.
• Expands extraterritorial reach – It significantly broadens US jurisdiction over foreign facilitators, whether they sit in Caracas, Tehran, Beirut or Madrid.
• Aligns narco and terror tools – It formally merges the war on drugs and the war on terror in the Venezuelan theatre, giving US policymakers a wider menu of sanctions, interdictions and—potentially—kinetic options.

In this context, Carvajal’s description of Maduro’s government as a “narco-terrorist organisation” is no longer merely rhetorical. It mirrors the language of US indictments and designations now embedded in law and policy.

Carvajal’s most geopolitically significant claims concern the Iran–Hezbollah dimension.

For years, analysts have warned that the Maduro regime has been “welcoming to Iranian intelligence agents”, allowing Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and Hezbollah to expand from the traditional Tri-Border Area of Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay into Venezuelan safe havens, including Margarita Island.

Venezuelan state airlines and front companies have provided air corridors and financial infrastructure for Iranian and Hezbollah operatives, sanctions-evasion schemes, and illicit gold and fuel trades.

Carvajal now appears to confirm and personalise this picture, portraying Iran and Hezbollah not as distant allies but as operational partners plugged into the same cartelised state apparatus that moves cocaine, launders money and weaponises gangs such as Tren de Aragua.

If accurate, that would mean the Cartel de los Soles is not merely a corrupt Latin American drug network. It is a state-embedded logistics hub for a wider anti-US axis that includes Tehran and its most dangerous terrorist proxy, Hezbollah.

Given his own crimes, why should US policymakers or courts treat Carvajal as anything other than a self-serving felon?

There are at least four reasons:

• He has already confessed. Carvajal has pleaded guilty to narco-terrorism and drug trafficking charges. He is not bargaining from a position of strength; he faces decades in prison.
• His role was central, not peripheral. As the former head of military intelligence and an alleged leader of the Cartel de los Soles, his knowledge cuts across intelligence, military, diplomatic and criminal networks. He was not an observer; he was a designer.
• His story aligns with existing US actions. His depiction of a regime-run cartel allied with FARC and violent gangs such as Tren de Aragua dovetails with recent US designations and sanctions. The strategic direction of US policy has already moved towards the picture he is sketching.
• He can provide testable intelligence. Names of shell companies, account numbers, aircraft tail numbers, routes, meeting locations and intermediaries can all be checked against signals intelligence, financial records, seized devices and other witnesses. If his information consistently checks out, his broader narrative gains weight.

The question is whether Carvajal’s testimony enables the United States and its allies to map and disrupt a hostile, state-sponsored narco-terror architecture that now stretches from Caracas to Tehran.

For two decades, warning lights around Venezuela, FARC, Iran and Hezbollah have flashed—often separately: a drug case here, a terror designation there, a sanctions listing somewhere else. What makes El Pollo’s testimony so dangerous to the Maduro regime is that it threatens to connect all those dots in one witness, one narrative and, eventually, one prosecutorial strategy.

If that happens, the former intelligence chief who once helped build the Chávez–Maduro security state may yet become its most devastating accuser.

The US Department of Justice’s superseding indictment referenced in this article, along with supporting materials from the 26 March 2020 press conference, can be found here:
• https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/nicol-s-maduro-moros-and-14-current-and-former-venezuelan-officials-charged-narco-terrorism
• https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/documents-related-march-26-2020-press-conference