View source for Cártel de los Soles in the El Zabayar case

[[File:Cártel de los Soles in the El Zabayar case.webp|thumb|upright=1.25|alt=Editorial illustration: Cártel de los Soles in the El Zabayar case|Symbolic editorial illustration of an unadjudicated charging narrative; not evidence or a portrait.]]

The '''Cártel de Los Soles''' was the name U.S. prosecutors used for an alleged network of high-ranking Venezuelan officials in the May 2020 complaint against former National Assembly member [[Adel El Zabayar]] and a related indictment. The prosecution alleged that officials used state institutions to facilitate cocaine trafficking and that El Zabayar arranged weapons as partial payment to FARC while separately seeking [[Hezbollah]] and Hamas recruits for planned attacks on U.S. interests. This account did not establish that Hezbollah operated the cartel’s cocaine trade. El Zabayar rejected the allegations.<ref name="r1" /><ref name="r2" /><ref name="r3" />

== The alleged network and its institutional role ==

The charging announcement explained the cartel’s name as a reference to sun insignias worn by senior Venezuelan military officers. The complaint alleged that, from about 1999 to 2020, high-ranking officials corrupted parts of the military, intelligence apparatus, legislature and judiciary to facilitate cocaine imports into the United States. It identified El Zabayar as an alleged member and incorporated the related superseding indictment unsealed in March 2020. This was the prosecution’s description of a network using institutions, rather than a finding that every official or institution belonged to a single cocaine organization.<ref name="r1" /><ref name="r2" />

The complaint’s broader cartel narrative included an alleged 5.6-ton cocaine shipment sent from Maiquetía to Campeche, Mexico, on a DC-9 aircraft in 2006, and a 1.3-ton shipment on a commercial flight from Maiquetía to Paris in September 2013. It reported seizures by Mexican and French authorities respectively, while attributing the shipments to the alleged cartel. These incidents formed part of the broader prosecution account. They were not identified in those passages as [[Hezbollah]] shipments or as the cocaine involved in the separate 2014 weapons-payment discussion.<ref name="r2" />

== The May 2020 charges ==

The complaint, sworn by DEA Special Agent Matthew Passmore on 27 May 2020, charged El Zabayar with a [[Narcoterrorism|narco-terrorism]] conspiracy, cocaine-importation conspiracy and two machinegun-and-destructive-device offenses. Count one specifically identified FARC and its members, operatives and associates as the intended recipients of pecuniary value under the charged narco-terrorism provision. The wider discussion of [[Hezbollah]] and Hamas in the factual narrative should therefore be distinguished from the wording of that count.<ref name="r1" /><ref name="r2" />

The May announcement drew both on El Zabayar’s complaint and on the related superseding indictment unsealed on 26 March 2020 against Nicolás Maduro and others. It described the Cártel de Los Soles as a network involving high-ranking Venezuelan officials and alleged a long-running cocaine relationship with FARC. The announcement expressly treated its descriptions as allegations and stated that the defendants were presumed innocent unless proved guilty. The prison terms it listed were potential statutory penalties, not sentences imposed on El Zabayar.<ref name="r1" />

== Two confidential-source accounts ==

The complaint attributed the central 2014 accounts to two different confidential sources. Its footnotes said that CS-1 had assisted the DEA since about 2014 and CS-2 since about 2019, both for monetary compensation, including living expenses, and in pursuit of cooperation agreements and sentencing leniency. The affidavit also stated that their information had been corroborated in part by other witnesses and documents. Those descriptions explain how the allegations entered the complaint; they are the affiant’s representations, not findings after a trial.<ref name="r2" />

== The alleged weapons payment to FARC ==

According to the account attributed to CS-2, Diosdado Cabello said at a 2014 meeting that he needed to provide weapons to FARC as partial payment for cocaine it had supplied to the Cártel de Los Soles. The complaint said FARC wanted anti-tank launchers as well as rifles, and that El Zabayar agreed to obtain the launchers through his Middle Eastern contacts. This described an alleged cartel–FARC exchange, with El Zabayar as a facilitator; it did not identify [[Hezbollah]] as the supplier or recipient of the cocaine.<ref name="r2" /><ref name="r1" />

CS-2 also reportedly attended a meeting at a military base in Guárico with El Zabayar, Cabello, Venezuelan military officials and a FARC representative. The complaint said Cabello pointed to two nearby trucks and described their weapons as partial payment for cocaine FARC had supplied. The account identified weapons in the trucks, including anti-tank launchers, rifles and ammunition. Its stated parties and payment direction matter: an alleged payment by the cartel to FARC is different from an alleged FARC payment to Hezbollah.<ref name="r2" />

== Recruitment and the proposed leaders’ meeting ==

The account attributed to CS-1 described approximately three meetings at Fuerte Tiuna in Caracas during 2014. Cabello allegedly directed El Zabayar to obtain weapons and recruit [[Hezbollah]] and Hamas members for clandestine training in Venezuela, with the stated purpose of creating a cell capable of attacking U.S. interests for the cartel. The complaint said El Zabayar agreed. The recruitment allegation concerned personnel and attack planning; it did not specify that the recruits handled FARC cocaine or received revenue from a particular shipment.<ref name="r2" /><ref name="r1" />

CS-1’s account also described El Zabayar returning from the Middle East and receiving a Lebanese cargo plane carrying weapons at Maiquetía airport. A later 2014 meeting at Miraflores Palace allegedly included discussion of arranging a meeting among FARC, Hezbollah and Hamas leaders. The complaint described the discussion of a proposed meeting. It did not say that the leaders subsequently met or agreed on a cocaine transaction. The airport account and the Guárico payment account came through different sources and should retain those separate attributions.<ref name="r2" />

== El Zabayar’s response and contemporary analysis ==

InSight Crime reported on 29 May 2020 that El Zabayar dismissed the accusations as infamies. Its analysis questioned the public evidence for the alleged recruitment network, including whether militants actually trained in Venezuela and for what purpose. Alma Keshavarz and Robert Bunker’s July 2020 Small Wars Journal account also reproduced reporting of his response that the allegations had been invented by the enemies of Venezuela and Syria. His political response was a rejection of the accusations, rather than an admission to the alleged cocaine or weapons transactions.<ref name="r3" /><ref name="r4" />

Other analysts placed the charges within a broader account of Venezuelan state involvement in criminal and militant networks. Joseph Humire’s Atlantic Council analysis and the August 2020 Society for a Secure and Free Society report treated the case as an example of brokerage or convergence among those networks. These interpretations differ in emphasis from InSight Crime’s criticism of the public details. They do not turn the complaint’s proposed contact into a completed leaders’ meeting or supply a transaction record between FARC and [[Hezbollah]].<ref name="r5" /><ref name="r6" /><ref name="r3" />

== Historical and organizational context ==

The alleged meetings took place in 2014, before the 2016 Colombian peace agreement and the subsequent fragmentation of FARC’s armed structures. UNODC’s 2023 cocaine report and InSight Crime’s 2022 regional study describe a later landscape of dissident factions and other armed groups competing over cocaine production and movement. DEA’s 2018 assessment likewise distinguished FARC dissident factions from other Colombian criminal organizations. Later references to dissidents should not silently replace the identity used in the complaint’s account of the earlier meetings.<ref name="r7" /><ref name="r8" /><ref name="r9" />

Sami Kronenfeld and Yoel Guzansky’s September 2013 INSS essay identified drug profits and access to cross-border criminal capabilities as incentives for militant organizations to participate in illicit markets. It discussed FARC and [[Hezbollah]] among examples of organizations linked to the drug economy. This offers a general explanation of why financial and logistical relationships can matter to armed groups; it does not establish a bilateral FARC–Hezbollah agreement in El Zabayar’s case.<ref name="r10" />

== Scope of the charging record ==

The shared intermediary in the 2020 narrative was El Zabayar within the alleged Cártel de Los Soles conspiracy. One alleged relationship concerned weapons and cocaine involving FARC; another concerned [[Hezbollah]]/Hamas recruitment; a further allegation concerned discussion of a leaders’ meeting. Their coexistence in a complaint did not adjudicate a direct operational alliance, common command or drug-finance transfer between FARC and Hezbollah. The complaint and charging announcement recorded accusations, not El Zabayar’s conviction.<ref name="r1" /><ref name="r2" />

== See also ==
* [[Hezbollah-linked narcotics finance in Colombia]]
* [[Lebanese Canadian Bank]]

== References ==
<references>
<ref name="r1">[https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/former-member-venezuelan-national-assembly-charged-narco-terrorism-drug-trafficking-and Former member of Venezuelan National Assembly charged with narco-terrorism, drug trafficking and weapons offenses]</ref>
<ref name="r2">[https://www.justice.gov/d9/press-releases/attachments/2020/05/27/adel_el_zabayar_complaint_20_mag_5469.pdf DEA Special Agent Matthew Passmore, El Zabayar complaint, 20 MAG 5469, 27 May 2020]</ref>
<ref name="r3">[https://insightcrime.org/news/brief/venezuela-hezbollah-hamas-indictment/ US Indictment Claims Venezuelan Politician Linked to Hezbollah, Hamas]</ref>
<ref name="r4">[https://smallwarsjournal.com/2020/07/02/hybrid-criminal-cartel-note-1-former-venezuelan-national-assembly-member-adel-el-zabayar/ Hybrid Criminal Cartel Note 1: Adel El Zabayar Indicted on Charges of Narcoterrorism and Links to Hezbollah]</ref>
<ref name="r5">[https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/in-depth-research-reports/issue-brief/the-maduro-hezbollah-nexus-how-iran-backed-networks-prop-up-the-venezuelan-regime/ The Maduro-Hezbollah Nexus: How Iran-backed Networks Prop up the Venezuelan Regime]</ref>
<ref name="r6">[https://www.securefreesociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/TRT-Journal_VZ-Crime-Terror-Convergence.pdf Venezuela’s Crime-Terrorist Convergence]</ref>
<ref name="r7">[https://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/cocaine/Global_cocaine_report_2023.pdf “Global Report on Cocaine 2023: Local Dynamics, Global Challenges,” UNODC Research, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, March 2023.]</ref>
<ref name="r8">[https://insightcrime.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Venezuelas-Cocaine-Revolution-InSight-Crime-Apr-2022.pdf InSight Crime, Venezuela’s Cocaine Revolution, April 2022]</ref>
<ref name="r9">[https://www.dea.gov/sites/default/files/2018-11/DIR-032-18%202018%20NDTA%20%5Bfinal%5D%20low%20resolution11-20.pdf 2018 National Drug Threat Assessment]</ref>
<ref name="r10">[https://www.inss.org.il/wp-content/uploads/systemfiles/MASA5-2Eng6_KronenfeldGuzansky.pdf Sami Kronenfeld and Yoel Guzansky, The Revolutionary Guards and the International Drug Trade, INSS, September 2013]</ref>
</references>

''Legal and sanctions status as of 19 October 2026.''

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