Feds offer $50M reward for arrest of Venezuela’s Maduro

The U.S. State and Justice departments on Thursday raised their reward offer for information leading to the arrest and conviction of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro to $50 million. Maduro broke U.S. narcotics laws, the departments said. The new reward offer is double what the State Department offered in January. U.S. authorities first indicted Maduro in 2020 along with 14 members of his inner circle.

Maduro has led the Cartel de los Soles, which traffics narcotics into the United States, for more than a decade, according to the departments. The Treasury Department in July labeled the cartel a Specially Designated Global Terrorist for providing material support to other violent cartels, including Tren de Aragua and Sinaloa.

The State and Justice departments also noted that the United States has refused to recognize Maduro as the president of Venezuela since 2024, when he claimed to have won a national election. The United States said that Maduro failed to produce full, detailed records of the election.

How did Venezuelan authorities respond to the reward increase? The country’s foreign minister, Yvan Gil, on Thursday said the reward was political propaganda intended to distract from Attorney General Pam Bondi’s struggles, including controversy over the Epstein investigation.

Dig deeper: Read my report on the Justice Department’s arrest of a soldier it said tried to give sensitive tank information to Russia.