Former Chief of Spy of Venezuela

Miami – A former Venezuelan spaster who was close to the late president of the country, Hugo Chávez, declared himself guilty on Wednesday of drug trafficking charges a week before his trial began in a federal court in Manhattan.

The largest retired general, Hugo Carvajal, was extradited from Spain in 2023 after more than a decade in the United States Police career, including a failed arrest in Aruba while working as a diplomat that represents the current Venezuelan government Nicolás Maduro.

Carvajal declared himself guilty in the court of the four criminal charges, including drug trafficking, in an accusation that accused him of leading a poster composed of high -ranking military officers who tried to “flood” the United States with cocaine in Cahouts with leftist guerrillas of neighboring Colombia.

In a letter this week to the defense lawyer, prosecutors said they believe that federal sentence guidelines require Carvajal, 65, to comply with a mandatory minimum of 50 years in prison.

Nicknamed “El Chicken”, Spanish for “The Chickn,” Carvajal advised Chavez for more than a decade. He later broke with Maduro, the selected successor of Chavez, and threw his support behind the political opposition backed by the United States, dramatically.

In a recording made of an unleashed place, Carvajal asked his former military cohorts to rebel a month in mass protests that seek to replace Maduro with the legislator Juan Guaidó, to whom the first Trump administration recognized as the legitimate leader of Venezuela as head of the National Assembly democratically chosen.

The expected barracks revolt never materialized, and Carvajal fled to Spain. In 2021, he was captured hidden in a Madrid department after challenging a Spanish extradition order and disappeared.

Carvajal’s direct guilt declaration, without any promise of clemency, could be part of a bet to gain credit in the future to cooperate with the United States efforts against a superior foreign adversary that is at the top of the world’s largest oil reserves.

Although Carvajal has been out of power for years, his sponsors say that he can provide potentially valuable ideas about the internal functioning of the propagation of the Venezuelan train of Aragua in the United States and the espionage activities of the mature governments of Cuba, Russia, China and Iran.

It can also be looking for President Trump’s attention with information to the Smartmatic voting technology company. One of Carvajal’s deputies was an important player in Venezuela’s electoral authority when the company was taking off.

Smartmatic, based in Florida, says that his global business was decimated when News issued false statements by Trump allied that he helped manipulate the 2020 elections in the United States. One of the company’s Venezuelan founders was later accused in the United States in a case of bribery that involves his work in the Philippines.

Gary Berntsen, a former CIA officer in Latin America who supervised the commands that hunted the Qaeda, sent a public letter this week to Mr. Trump and urge the Department of Justice to delay the start of the Carvajal trial so that officials could inform the former Spymaster.

“He is not an angel, he is a very bad man,” Berntsen said in an interview. “But we need to defend democracy.”

Carvajal’s lawyer, Robert Feitel, said prosecutors announced in the court this month that they never extended an offer of guilt to their client or tried to meet him.

“I think it was a huge mistake,” Feitel told The News while rejected more comments. “It has information that is extraordinarily important for our national security and the application of the law.”

In 2011, prosecutors alleged that Carvajal used their office to coordinate the smuggling of approximately 5,600 kilograms (12,300 pounds) of cocaine aboard a plane from Venezuela to Mexico in 2006. In return, he accepted millions of dollars from drug traffickers, prosecutors said.

He supposedly organized the shipment as one of the leaders of the so -called Suns cartel, a wink to the Sun badges placed to the uniforms of the Venezuelan Military Officers. Cocaine was obtained by the revolutionary armed forces of Colombia, which the United States has designated as a terrorist organization and that for years took refuge in Venezuela, since it sought to overthrow the Government of Colombia.

Carvajal “exploded his position as director of Venezuela’s military intelligence and abandoned his responsibility to the people of Venezuela to intentionally cause the United States,” said Dea’s interim administrator Robert Murphy. “After years of trying to evade the police, (he) now he will probably spend the rest of his life in the federal prison.”

Carjaval’s “declaration of guilt demonstrates our commitment to hold foreign officials who abuse their power to poison our citizens,” said US prosecutor Jay Clayton in a statement from the Department of Justice.

• Venezuela