Source: reason.com - Thursday, January 29, 2015
Leamsy Salazar, the former security chief for the head of the Venezuelan National Assembly Diosdado Cabello and a former bodyguard for the late Hugo Chavez, has defected to the United States. According to reports in the Spanish language press, the long-time military officer told U.S. investigators Cabello acted as the head of the Soles cartel, a drug cartel whose existence has been a matter of debate but which is alleged to be embedded in the Venezuelan armed forces. The Venezuelan government, naturally, denies the claims. For his part, Cabello dismissed Salazar's allegations against him as a matter of "disloyalty," lamenting that Hugo Chavez's strength, loyalty, and love should have "rubbed off" on Salazar. The story, via Foreign Policy : Emili Blasco, the ABC reporter who broke the story, says that his report on Cabello's criminal enterprise draws upon information from anonymous "sources within the U.S. investigation" as well as an interview with the defector himself. The Soles are said to hold a veritable monopoly over the Venezuelan drug trade, which specializes in transferring cocaine produced in rebel-controlled territory in Colombia (near the Venezuelan border) to Mexican cartels. (The detour through Venezuela enables the Colombian traffickers to dodge their own security forces, who are ostensibly less corrupt than Venezuela's.) According to the ABC report, an astounding 90 percent of Colombian drugs pass through Venezuela.
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Leamsy Salazar, the former security chief for the head of the Venezuelan National Assembly Diosdado Cabello and a former bodyguard for the late Hugo Chavez, has defected to the United States. According to reports in the Spanish language press, the long-time military officer told U.S. investigators Cabello acted as the head of the Soles cartel, a drug cartel whose existence has been a matter of debate but which is alleged to be embedded in the Venezuelan armed forces. The Venezuelan government, naturally, denies the claims. For his part, Cabello dismissed Salazar's allegations against him as a matter of "disloyalty," lamenting that Hugo Chavez's strength, loyalty, and love should have "rubbed off" on Salazar. The story, via Foreign Policy : Emili Blasco, the ABC reporter who broke the story, says that his report on Cabello's criminal enterprise draws upon information from anonymous "sources within the U.S. investigation" as well as an interview with the defector himself. The Soles are said to hold a veritable monopoly over the Venezuelan drug trade, which specializes in transferring cocaine produced in rebel-controlled territory in Colombia (near the Venezuelan border) to Mexican cartels. (The detour through Venezuela enables the Colombian traffickers to dodge their own security forces, who are ostensibly less corrupt than Venezuela's.) According to the ABC report, an astounding 90 percent of Colombian drugs pass through Venezuela.from Top News on RSS Feeds http://ift.tt/1CDqgDY
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