Caracas Calls Washington’s Announcement “Pathetic” and “Crude Propaganda Operation”
US authorities announced this Thursday a $50 million (almost €43 million) reward for information leading to the arrest of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, raising the $25 million (just over €21 million) figure announced earlier this year.
“Today, the Department of Justice and the State Department are announcing a historic $50 million reward for information leading to the arrest of Nicolás Maduro,” US Attorney General Pam Bondi announced in a video posted on her X social media account, in which she asserted that “under President (Donald) Trump’s leadership, Maduro will not escape justice and will be held accountable for his despicable crimes.”
Washington justified this decision, according to the prosecutor, because “to date, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has seized 30 tons of cocaine linked to Maduro and his associates and nearly seven tons linked to the Venezuelan leader himself,” while her ministry “has seized more than $700 million (almost €600 million) in assets linked to Maduro, including two private jets, nine vehicles, and much more.”
US authorities therefore consider Maduro “one of the world’s largest drug traffickers and a threat to our national security” and accuse him of employing criminal gangs such as Tren de Aragua, Sinaloa, and the Cartel de los Hijos—designated as terrorist organizations by the United States—to bring lethal drugs and violence into the United States.
Caracas’s response came from Foreign Minister Yván Gil, who called the reward offered by the United States “pathetic.” “It’s the most ridiculous smokescreen we’ve ever seen,” he declared on his Telegram channel.
He criticized Bondi for organizing “a media circus for the defeated far right in Venezuela, while we dismantle the terrorist plots orchestrated from their country.”
The Venezuelan foreign minister asserted that Bondi’s announcement “doesn’t surprise us, coming from who it comes from” and recalled the controversy that arose in the United States over the case of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. “Their show is a joke, a desperate distraction from their own misery,” he stated.
“The dignity of our homeland is not for sale. We repudiate this crude political propaganda operation,” the minister concluded.
In January of this year, the US government—still in the hands of Democrat Joe Biden—increased the reward for information leading to Maduro’s arrest or conviction from $15 million to $25 million, as part of a package of measures and sanctions for what Washington denounced as an “illegitimate inauguration” following the July 2024 presidential elections, considered fraudulent by the opposition and much of the international community.
