By Luc Cohen
NEW YORK (Reuters) – A man accused of bribing top Venezuelan political and military leaders was convicted on Wednesday of shipping tens of thousands of kilograms of cocaine to the United states.
A federal jury in New York found Carlos Orense guilty on three counts of drug trafficking and criminal weapons possession after a two-week trial. Orense had pleaded not guilty, and his defense lawyer portrayed him at trial as a legitimate businessman in Venezuela’s agricultural and oil sectors.
“He partnered with corrupt high-ranking government and military officials in Venezuela and employed an arsenal of high-powered weapons to protect his cocaine distribution organization,” Damian Williams, the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, said in a statement.
Orense was convicted after a witness testified that Orense’s ties with Venezuelan officials such as former military intelligence chief Hugo Carvajal and former general Cliver Alcala helped him transport cocaine through Venezuela’s territory and export it via air and sea without detection.
The witness, former Orense associate Antonio Arvelaiz, also testified that a onetime chief executive officer of Venezuelan-owned U.S. oil refiner Citgo Petroleum helped Orense move drug money in the mid-2000s.
Carvajal has pleaded not guilty to separate U.S. drug trafficking charges. Alcala pleaded guilty earlier this year to providing material assistance to Colombia’s FARC rebels. Citgo declined to comment.
U.S. accusations of official Venezuelan complicity in the drugs trade have long been a source of tension in the frosty relationship between Washington and the socialist-run OPEC member. President Nicolas Maduro himself was indicted in 2020 on U.S. “narcoterrorism” charges, which he called false and racist.
(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York; Additional reporting by Marianna Parraga in Houston; editing by Grant McCool)
