Venezuelan leader Maduro to face judge in first US court hearing Monday

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who was ousted from office and removed from the country over the weekend, is expected to make his first appearance in front of a U.S. federal judge Monday, according to a courts’ spokesperson.

Maduro is at the forefront of corruption in Venezuela and partnered with others to “use his illegally obtained authority and the institutions he corroded to transport thousands of tons of cocaine to the United States,” according to a superseding federal indictment made public Saturday.

He was captured by U.S. armed forces in an overnight raid and brought to America to face four criminal charges including narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy, possession of and conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices, according to his indictment.

Maduro is scheduled for a noon hearing Monday in front of a New York City District Court judge, a federal court spokesperson said.

According to officials, he is not the only political leader who abused a position of power for years.

Maduro was indicted alongside several Venezuelan politicians including his wife and de facto First Lady of Venezuela, Cilia Flores, and his son, Nicolás Ernesto Maduro Guerra, the indictment said.

Venezuela has western access to the mountainous regions of Columbia, where coca is grown and turned into the majority of the world’s cocaine supply, the indictment said. Officials, including Maduro, partnered with drug traffickers and “narco-terrorist groups” to transport that cocaine to the United States.

“By in or about 2020, the State Department estimated that between 200 and 250 tons of cocaine were trafficked through Venezuela annually,” the indictment said.

Venezuelan officials are accused of various illegal acts to further drug trafficking such as selling Venezuelan diplomatic passports to known drug traffickers, accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes and using diplomatic covers for certain air travel to receive no scrutiny from law enforcement.

Maduro is being held at Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, according to the Associated Press, which has housed many high-profile inmates from Sean “Diddy” Combs to Luigi Mangione.

Miami Herald reporter Claire Heddles contributed to this report.