Exclusive-US turns up heat on Venezuela with threat to indict new leader Delcy Rodriguez
Written by: Sarah Kinosian and Matt Spetalnick
CARACAS/WASHINGTON, March 3 (Reuters) – The Trump administration is quietly building a case against Venezuelan interim president Delcy Rodriguez, including drafting a criminal indictment, one of several tools it is using to strengthen its influence in Caracas, four people familiar with the matter said.
Sources said federal prosecutors have filed charges of possible corruption and money laundering and have conveyed to Rodriguez that he risks being investigated if he does not continue to comply with Trump’s demands following the ouster of former Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro in January.
Reuters has not seen written charges against Rodriguez being prepared but spoke to four people with knowledge of the matter. The news agency was the first to report on the effort to draft an indictment against Rodriguez on allegations of money laundering and corruption. Sources said Rodriguez was made verbally aware of this.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Miami is preparing draft charges, sources said, adding that the document has been developed over the past two months. The investigation focuses on Rodriguez’s alleged involvement in the laundering of funds from Venezuela’s state oil company PDVSA and covers activities between 2021 and 2025, three of the sources said.
The Justice Department declined to comment on the story. After a summary of the report was published on the Reuters World News morning podcast, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche wrote of
Reuters said in a statement: “We stand by our reporting that the Department of Justice has filed an indictment against Venezuela’s new president, Delcy Rodriguez.”
The White House and the US State Department did not respond to Reuters’ questions regarding this news.
Separate from the draft indictment, U.S. authorities presented Rodriguez with a list of at least seven former senior party officials, associates and family members who wanted him arrested or detained in Venezuela for potential extradition, four sources said. This was first reported by Spain’s ABC newspaper.
Rodriguez faces that threat just two months after he came to power following a lightning raid by U.S. special forces that captured Maduro and took the long-time authoritarian leader to New York to stand trial on narcoterrorism and cocaine trafficking charges. Maduro has pleaded not guilty and is being held in New York pending trial.
Trump publicly praised Rodriguez for cooperating with the United States and hailed Venezuela as “our new friend and partner” in his annual State of the Union address.
But the draft indictment is another bargaining chip the United States has added as it tries to force members of the Venezuelan government once loyal to Maduro to do its bidding.
Venezuela’s communications ministry, which answers all media questions on behalf of the government, did not respond to a detailed list of questions about potential charges against Rodriguez.
Preparation of a draft indictment does not mean that a case will be presented to the grand jury by the prosecutor; that jury will then have to find that probable cause existed to believe that Rodriguez committed a crime. Grand juries meet in secret, and Reuters was unable to determine whether prosecutors had begun presenting any evidence against Rodriguez to the grand jury.
Since the capture of Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, on Jan. 3, Trump has relied on Maduro’s 56-year-old former vice president, Rodríguez, to guarantee stability in Venezuela while prioritizing U.S. companies’ access to the OPEC nation’s oil reserves.
Flores also pleaded not guilty to federal charges, including drug trafficking.
Other members of the Rodriguez administration already indicted in the United States include hardline Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello and Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino, who along with Rodriguez were longtime members of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), founded by the late Hugo Chavez. Cabello and Padrino, both still in power in post-Maduro Venezuela, have consistently denied any wrongdoing.
Many of the people the U.S. wants Rodriguez to arrest or detain already have U.S. indictments for money laundering, drug trafficking and other crimes, according to four sources familiar with the matter.
Newly appointed US ambassador to Venezuela Laura Doğu conveyed the request to Rodriguez, sources told Reuters.
Among the high-profile names given to Rodriguez is Alex Saab, 54, who emerged as a close ally of Maduro and became one of the most influential financial operators within the Chavista movement, according to four sources.
Following the Interpol notification requested by the United States, Saab was previously arrested by local authorities in Cabo Verde in 2020 while he was on his way to Iran on an official mission on behalf of the Maduro government. He faced bribery and money laundering charges for allegedly diverting $350 million from a corrupt housing construction scheme in Venezuela through the US financial system before being extradited to the US and released in a prisoner swap by the Biden administration in 2023.
Reuters reported that Saab was arrested in early February and that two sources said he remains in custody by Venezuela’s intelligence service, SEBIN. The United States has a new sealed money laundering indictment against Saab, but its status was not immediately known, two of the sources said.
If extradited, Saab could provide U.S. authorities with information that could strengthen the criminal case against Maduro, according to a source with knowledge of the case.
It is unclear whether Colombian Saab, who was granted Venezuelan citizenship by Maduro, will be extradited to the United States. Venezuelan law prohibits the extradition of Venezuelan citizens; this is a hurdle for many whom Washington seeks.
Saab’s U.S.-based attorney, Neil M. Schuster, did not respond to detailed questions about whether Saab had been arrested, any charges against him, or whether he had previously made any statements about Maduro during his U.S. arrest.
Other names on the list include media mogul Raul Gorrin, who was detained by SEBIN in Venezuela last month, according to three sources familiar with the matter.
Gorrin faces multiple federal charges in the United States, primarily related to bribery, money laundering and corruption involving Venezuela’s state oil company PDVSA.
Gorrin did not respond to emails and a text message seeking comment, and neither did media company Globovisión.
Miami attorney Howard Srebnick, who previously represented Gorrin, did not immediately return a request for comment.
(Reporting by Sarah Kinosian in Miami and Matt Spetalnik in Washington, D.C. Additional reporting by Julia Symmes Cobb in Bogotá, Colombia. Editing by Michael Learmonth)
