Venezuela in the El Zabayar case

Editorial illustration: Venezuela in the El Zabayar case

Illustrative charging-record scene; allegations are not presented as findings or collective responsibility.

Venezuela was the setting for alleged cocaine, weapons and recruitment activities described in the May 2020 U.S. case against former National Assembly member Adel El Zabayar. Prosecutors accused him of assisting the Cártel de Los Soles, including arranging weapons as partial payment to FARC for cocaine and separately recruiting Hezbollah and Hamas members for planned attacks. The alleged meetings and shipments involved sites in Caracas, Maiquetía and Guárico. These were accusations against named people, not findings against Venezuela as a country or proof that all the named groups jointly trafficked cocaine. El Zabayar rejected the accusations.

The May 2020 charges

The complaint, sworn by DEA Special Agent Matthew Passmore on 27 May 2020, charged El Zabayar with a 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.

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.

The locations and sources of the allegations

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.

Guárico: the alleged weapons payment

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.

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.

Caracas and Maiquetía: recruitment, cargo and proposed contact

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Venezuela’s border and transit context

InSight Crime’s 2022 study of Venezuela’s cocaine economy describes a border landscape involving Colombian armed actors, Venezuelan territory and routes for moving cocaine. UNODC’s 2023 report places the post-2016 fragmentation of FARC within that changing regional market. These accounts help explain the strategic value of sanctuary, transport access and intermediaries. They are broader geographical and historical analyses; they do not establish that El Zabayar participated in every Venezuelan drug route or that Hezbollah controlled those routes.

Relationship to separate laundering cases

Venezuela also appears in accounts of Ayman Joumaa’s alleged laundering routes, but the Joumaa indictment and Lebanese Canadian Bank civil action concern different named participants, periods and proceedings. The El Zabayar charging narrative does not supply a transaction linking him to those cases or establish a common command structure. A shared country on a route is insufficient to turn separate case records into a single operation.

See also

• Hezbollah-linked narcotics finance in Colombia
• Lebanese Canadian Bank

References

Legal and sanctions status as of 7 September 2026.