CARACAS, March 25 (NNN-PRENSA LATINA) — Venezuela’s Vice President for Policy, Citizen Security, and Peace, Diosdado Cabello, offered new details of Operation Relámpago in the state of Zulia, where more than nine thousand kilograms of drugs were seized.
In a press conference, he revealed the close ties between the parties involved, including businessmen, opposition leaders, drug traffickers, the judicial system, the prosecutor’s office, and state officials, including mayors and police officers.
Cabello stated that a relationship of “conspiracy, drug trafficking, and corruption with all its facets” was established between them, in which “sectors that exercise government functions in Zulia” were held.
The Minister of Internal Affairs, Justice, and Peace denounced the financial structure orchestrated by businessman José Enrique Rincón, a fugitive from justice and resident in Colombia, throughout Zulia (northwestern Venezuela), particularly linked to the coastal areas of Lake Maracaibo.
He emphasized that opposition sectors led by María Corina Machado are deeply involved in this operation, having met with Venezuelan businessman Rincón in Colombia.
The Bolivarian politician reiterated that state officials and opposition leaders maintain ties with the Rincón brothers, in a “major operation linked to corruption, drug trafficking, and conspiracy.”
Regarding the involvement of mayors from the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) in this plot, the PSUV leader stated they were elected “with the vote of the Revolution, which they betrayed, and now they assume their responsibility, and we assume ours.”
He revealed this structure financed electoral campaigns and has been fully identified, and “the Government, the President, the Revolution will continue to act, and we will continue to operate as we should.”
Commenting on the campaign intended to victimize the now-imprisoned former mayor of Maracaibo, Rafael Ramírez, Cabello pointed out that he treated that municipality as a private area, adding that Rincón’s ties to paramilitary camps have been proven.
He also revealed that the mayor of the Santa Bárbara municipality in Zulia was the linchpin for the acquisition of weapons by drug trafficking groups operating throughout the southern part of Lake Maracaibo.
The political leader reiterated that the funding that opposition leader Machado was receiving came from the drug trafficking of former Colombian presidents Álvaro Uribe and Iván Duque, and “that is why this operation has hurt her so much,” which was a devastating blow to the schemes they had planned to carry out at the time.
“There are a number of people arrested that it’s embarrassing to say,” he stated, emphasizing that this is a full-scale operation “with and against everyone involved in the drug trafficking mafia.” — NNN-PRENSA LATINA
