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Franqui
Francisco Flores de Freitas sits in federal court in Manhattan,
New York, December 17, 2015, in this courtroom
sketch.
Thomson
Reuters
Late on Friday, after several hours of deliberation, jurors filed
back into a New York courtroom and handed down a guilty verdict against two
nephews of the Venezuelan first lady.
Their decision, the culmination of an often sordid trial that
began on November 7, may not lead to more scrutiny on officials
in Venezuela, one of the Western Hemisphere’s most dysfunctional
countries where high-level officials are suspected of running a
wide-ranging drug-trafficking enterprise.
Franqui Francisco Flores de Freitas, 31, and Efrain Antonio Campo
Flores, 30, were arrested in Haiti almost a year ago and
immediately extradited to the US, where this week they were
convicted of conspiracy to import nearly 1,800 pounds of
cocaine to the US via Honduras in a multimillion-dollar drug
deal.
Over the last several months, however, the prospects of their
case became more uncertain, as a steady stream of details made
the government’s key witnesses, themselves drug traffickers, look
ever more unreliable.
The US government paid about $1.2 million to Jose Santos-Pena, 55, and his
son, Jose Santos-Hernandez, 34, for information about drug deals
over the last few years. The pair also traveled internationally
at the behest of the US Drug Enforcement Administration, meeting
with suspected traffickers and making secret recordings for US
investigators.
This spring, however, US prosecutors learned that Santos-Pena and
Santos-Hernandez were themselves smuggling drugs while working
for US agents. At the end of this summer, the two of them
pleaded guilty to drug charges, admitting
that they had dealt drugs for at least four years.
Efrain
Antonio Campo Flores, second from left, and Franqui Francisco
Flores de Freitas stand with law-enforcement officers in this
November 12, 2015, photo after their arrest in Port Au Prince,
Haiti.
Thomson
Reuters
Santos-Hernandez did not testify, but Santos-Pena did, and more
details about his misdeeds soon emerged.
At a hearing in September, he confessed to prosecutors that he had used a
prostitute twice during a trip to Caracas and that he had allowed
a friend of his son to be present at DEA-arranged meetings with
the two Venezuelans being investigated. He also confessed to
using cocaine while working for the US.
During the trial, the defense tried to paint the prosecution’s
case as deeply flawed.
Amid the proceedings, defense counsel Randall Jackson revealed jailhouse recordings showing that
Santos-Pena had kept communicating about drug deals in the weeks
before the trial.
Prosecutors decided to disregard the cooperation agreement they had
reached with Santos-Pena, doing away with potential leniency for
his role in the case and meaning he could face 10 years to life
in prison.
«He lied in your face!» defense attorney David Rody told the jurors. «You saw a rare thing, a
government cooperator get ripped up in court.»
«He was slime,» juror Robert Lewis, a 69-year-old architect from
Westchester, New York, said of Santos-Pena. Despite that distaste,
Lewis said that other evidence in the case, like recordings,
transcripts of conversations, and texts messages, were enough to
convict the nephews. «We had to rely on those things,» he
told the Associated Press.
Some of those recordings were of poor quality, but at least one showed the
nephews handling a brick of cocaine, and in another recording,
Campo is heard to say, «I’m 30 years old. I’ve been doing this
work since I was 18.»
The recordings were central to the prosecutors’ case, which
argued the pair were not minor players, but
driving figures behind a plan to pull of a multimillion-dollar
drug scheme and funnel money into their aunt’s political
campaign.
Efrain
Antonio Campo Flores, seated second from left and flanked by his
attorneys, has an emotional reaction, while appearing with cousin
Franqui Francisco Flores De Freitas, far right, in Manhattan
federal court at their arraignment on cocaine-smuggling charges
in New York, December 17, 2015.
AP
Photo/Elizabeth Williams, File
«It’s the nature of the business to have cooperators with really
unseemly pasts,» Daniel C. Richman, a law professor at Columbia
Law School, told the AP after the trial. Santos-Pena, the
elder of the two witnesses, had admitted to being part of Mexico’s powerful
Sinaloa cartel prior to working for US authorities.
«A lot of them come from a criminal background,» Mike Vigil, a
former chief of international operations for the US Drug
Enforcement Administration, told Business Insider before the case went to
trial. «And we in the government use them to get in-depth
information that we would not normally get, and as a result of
that a lot of times they come under attack by defense attorneys.»
The two nephews will likely be sentenced in early March next
year, and while the face a minimum of 10 years, they could get up
to life in prison.
«A conviction for conspiracy can bring a life sentence, but if
this is the first time the two nephews have been convicted, I
don’t think the judge will give them life sentences, but 10 or 20
years,» Vigil, author of of «Metal Coffins: The Blood Alliance Cartel,»
told CNN after the verdict was announced.
«Everything depends on the judge.»
‘Venezuela now is a principal point for the transit of cocaine’
Throughout the case, details emerged that suggested high-level
Venezuelan officials had involvement in the drug trade.
Flores de Freitas and Campo Flores are nephews of the country’s
first lady, Cilia Flores, who is married to embattled President
Nicolas Maduro, who is grappling with a deteriorating economy and fractious political
situation. Maduro’s approval rating slipped to 19.5% in October, down from about
22% the month prior. The poll, which was not pubic, found about
78.5% of Venezuelans disapproved of Maduro, according to Reuters.
Judge
James Cott, attorneys John J. Reilly, center, and Rebekah J.
Poston, right, with defendants Efrain Antonio Campo Flores, right
foreground, and Franqui Francisco Flores de Freitas, center
foreground, during a hearing in US District Court in the
Manhattan borough of New York in this courtroom sketch from
November 12, 2015.
Thomson
Reuters
Documents filed by US prosecutors and seen by Insight Crime
alleged that the two intended to secure a
large quantity of cocaine from the FARC, a Colombian rebel group
active in the drug trade, and that they were going to use the
presidential airplane hanger at Caracas’ international airport to
move the drugs north to Honduras.
A Honduran trafficker arrested in relation to the case allegedly
served as a contact in that country for a Venezuelan trafficking
network called the Cartel of the Suns, which is believed to
operate in cells in the branches of Venezuela’s military.
In a recorded conversation cited by Insight Crime, Campo Flores said
that «government executives» and the Cartel of the Suns «were the
only ones who worked» in drug trafficking in Venezuela, and that
they were «in charge of fumigating [eliminating] anyone who tried
to enter to work in the country.»
During the trial, a DEA agent also testified that an information
told him a high-ranking Venezuelan police official named Bladimir
Flores, who is also Cilia Flores’ brother, helped set up a meeting between the two
nephews and a well-connected Honduran trafficker. That Honduran
trafficker was killed less than a month after the pair
was arrested.
Cilia
Flores, center, deputy of Venezuela’s United Socialist Party
(PSUV) and wife of Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro, talks to
the media after a failed session of the National Assembly for
lack of quorum in Caracas, January 12, 2016.
Thomson Reuters
The US has been carrying out investigations of high-level
Venezuelan officials accused of complicity in drug trafficking
for some time.
In August, the US unsealed indictments against two senior
Venezuelan officials, accusing them of cooperating with
traffickers.
Those indictments were the result of a US government
investigation targeting high-level officials who are suspected of
turning Venezuela «into a global hub for cocaine trafficking and
money laundering,» The Wall Street Journal reported last year.
According to Vigil, institutional weaknesses and rampant
corruption in Venezuela, coupled with the FARC’s extensive
involvement in the drug trade, have helped turn the
Venezuela-Colombia frontier in a trafficking nexus.
«Venezuela has a very weak judicial [system], and corruption in
Venezuela is supremely widespread, and I’m talking about at the
highest levels, so it doesn’t surprise me that we’re talking
about the FARC,» Vigil told CNN. «and Venezuela now is a principal
point for the transit of cocaine from Colombia to the United
States and Europe also.»
There is a possibility that the two nephews will be open to
cooperating with US authorities, perhaps revealing other
Venezuelan officials involved in drug trafficking, Vigil noted.
«Our client’s obviously disappointed, but we want to see what the
next steps are,» said Randall Jackson, a lawyer for Campo Flores,
according to Reuters.
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