Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro dismissed claims linking his government to drug-trafficking and insecurity, asserting that Venezuela has strong public safety and is being targeted for its natural resources. He made the remarks during a meeting with community representatives in the Caracas neighborhood of Pinto Salinas.
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The head of state repeated accusations that several opposition leaders — Juan Guaidó, David Smolansky, Carlos Vecchio, Leopoldo López and María Corina Machado — “created a network of human trafficking” and that this network moved “a recognized group of criminals” through the Darién route toward the United States. He argued that these individuals were part of the Tren de Aragua group, which, according to him, the Venezuelan state dismantled “with the law and the Constitution in hand.”
Defending the government’s security record, he said Venezuela “enjoys great security in its cities and towns.” He attributed this to the intelligence, counterintelligence and police services, which he described as “one of the best in the world, professional at a university level and with very dedicated and patriotic people.” He pointed to the national “quadrants of peace” strategy as central to that approach, asserting: “All those fables, all those fake news fall on their own.”
Addressing allegations of drug-trafficking, the president cited reports from the DEA, the United Nations, the European Union and the World Customs Organization, which he said demonstrate that Venezuela is “irrelevant in production and trafficking of drugs.” He contrasted Venezuela with neighboring Colombia, claiming past Colombian administrations had “created a narco-state” with extensive coca cultivation. “In Venezuela there is not a single hectare of coca leaf and not a single hectare of marijuana,” he stated. According to Maduro, Venezuelan authorities intercept “more than 70%” of the cocaine attempting to cross from Colombia and aim to reach “100%” next year.
The Venezuelan leader also directed accusations at Ecuador’s commercial sector, claiming drug shipments to the United States and Europe pass through ports linked to private companies there. “Seventy percent of the cocaine leaves from the ports of the personal and family company of Daniel Novoa. That is the truth,” he said.
The president framed international pressure on Venezuela as driven by interest in the country’s vast oil reserves. “If Venezuela did not have the world’s largest oil reserves, Venezuela would not exist for the multimillionaires and supremacists of the United States,” he said, and reaffirmed that under Venezuelan law, “everything beneath the earth… belongs to the sovereign people of Venezuela by constitutional mandate.”
President Maduro urged Venezuelan communicators to strengthen international outreach, particularly in the United States and allied nations, saying the global audience “believes in our truth.” he argued that recent political discourse reveals the underlying motive for foreign pressure: “It is for oil. No blood for oil.”
From teleSUR English via This RSS Feed.