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A formal substitute indictment filed in a federal court in the United States includes Cilia Adela Flores de Maduro among the defendants in a case that charges several leaders of the chavismo with a conspiracy of cocaine trafficking and weapons-related offenses, as well as detailing alleged bribery payments and the use of armed groups to protect those operations.
In the section of "manifest acts" attributed to the accused, the document states that around 2007, Flores allegedly attended a meeting in which he "accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars" in bribes to facilitate a meeting between a major drug trafficker and the then director of the National Anti-Drug Office of Venezuela, Néstor Reverol Torres.
The accusation adds that the drug trafficker allegedly agreed to a monthly payment to Reverol Torres and about $100,000 for each flight transporting cocaine, and that a portion of those payments would have been delivered to Flores.
The same text claims that, between 2004 and 2015, Nicolás Maduro and Flores "worked together" to traffic cocaine, some of which was allegedly previously seized by Venezuelan security forces, and they were accompanied by armed military escorts.
It also claims that both maintained groups of "state-sponsored gangs" known as collectives to facilitate and protect the operation.
The accusation also adds that Maduro and Flores allegedly ordered kidnappings, beatings, and murders against individuals who supposedly owed them money from drug trafficking or who "undermined" their operations, including —according to the document— an order to assassinate a local drug chief in Caracas.
The charges and the scope of the case
In the indictment section, the grand jury accuses Maduro, Cabello, Rodríguez Chacín, Flores, and other co-defendants of a cocaine importation conspiracy that would span from "at least 1999" to approximately 2025.
The document also includes a charge related to weapons ("possession of machine guns and destructive devices") linked to the alleged drug trafficking activity.
The accusation describes Cilia Flores as "de facto first lady" due to her marriage to Maduro around 2013, and lists previous political roles, including the presidency of the National Assembly (2006-2011), the Attorney General's office (2012-2013), and her status as a member of the Constituent National Assembly since 2017.
The report mentions that, in 2015, two relatives of Maduro and Flores (Efraín Campo Flores and Franqui Francisco Flores de Freitas) allegedly discussed in recorded meetings with confidential DEA sources about dispatching shipments of cocaine from a presidential hangar in Maiquetía and that they were seeking to raise 20 million dollars to support Flores's campaign.
The document adds that both were convicted in 2016 for conspiracy to import cocaine.
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