Nicolás Maduro and wife Cilia Flores wore matching straw hats during a rally in Caracas last month.
Now they have matching handcuffs and a floor separating them at the notorious Metropolitan Detention Center jail in Brooklyn.
While Maduro, the now-toppled dictator of Venezuela, has been indicted in the US since 2020 on drug trafficking and narco-terror charges and is widely known to have ignored the results of his country’s 2024 election and seized power, much less is known about his wife.
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However, the 69-year-old First Lady has been described by a former head of intelligence in Venezuela as being “behind the curtain, pulling the strings.”
“She is a fundamental figure in corruption in Venezuela — absolutely fundamental — and especially in the structure of power,” said Zair Mundaray, a former senior prosecutor in the Maduro government.
“Many people consider her far more astute and shrewd than Maduro himself.”
Flores was captured by US forces in a raid on the safe house she and Maduro inhabited in Caracas in the early hours of last Saturday and was transported to the US.
Arraigned in court Monday, the once coddled first lady of Venezuela had bandages on her face and what appeared to be a bruised right eye.
Her lawyer suggested these injuries – including a possible rib fracture – were caused during the raid, which saw the death of most of their protection squad, according to reports.
Within Maduro’s hardline regime of oppression, Flores was allegedly anything but a wallflower. The indictments against both of them paint a picture of a two-person cartel, with allegations of drug profits, high-powered weapons and absolute control of those around them.
While Maduro snagged headlines, Flores is said to have been a stealth operator.
A one-time confidante of the late Hugo Chávez, Flores was nicknamed both Latin Lady Macbeth (referring to her ambitiousness behind the scenes) and First Warrior. Flores apparently likes to refer to herself as a “combatant.”
Like her husband, she pleaded not guilty to all charges against her, which also include cocaine importation conspiracy and possession of machine guns, on Monday.
Flores is accused of accepting massive bribes from drug dealers to smooth cartel routes and her nephews (dubbed “narcophews”) were previously arrested in the US for cocaine trafficking.
According to the US government, they planned to use money from the drug sales to fund Flores’ 2015 campaign for National Assembly in Venezuela.
It is alleged she participated in the trafficking of cocaine —”much of which had been seized by Venezuelan law enforcement, with the assistance of armed military escorts,” according to the Department of Justice’s indictment — while guarded by “state sponsored gangs known as colectivos,” per the indictment against her. The gangs were there to “protect their drug trafficking operation.”
“She clearly benefited from corrupt acts within the Maduro regime,” Mark P. Jones, a political science fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute, told The Post.
“If the indictments are correct, that would include receiving and facilitating payments from drug traffickers to operate with impunity within Venezuela.”
In fact, Flores also stands accused of accepting hundreds-of-thousands-of-dollars in payments.
“It suggests that she’s a political operator in her own right,” said Jones. “But she has that power because of her husband.”
A lawyer who rose way beyond her lower middle-class roots, Flores loaded influential government agencies with relatives who did her bidding and got rich right alongside her. Jones speculates this was not done purely from the goodness of her heart or because she wants to benefit those who share her blood.
“In this kind of an environment, there is very limited trust,” said Jones. He described hiring relatives as a “survival instinct,” adding that it’s a common move among South American political thugs.
“They believe that their relatives are the least likely of anyone to betray them… Not that they completely trust their relatives.”
A case in point would be the two so-called narcophews, Efrain Antonio Camp Flores and Franqui Francisco Flores de Freitas.
In 2017, they were each sentenced to 18 years in prison for conspiring to import cocaine into the United States. However, in 2022 they were released and sent back to Venezuela in a prisoner swap with the US.
“In part to fund an election campaign for the First Lady of Venezuela, [the nephews] devised a plan to work with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) terrorist group to send literally tons of cocaine to the United States,” Joon H. Kim, acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said at the time of their sentencing.
He described their plan as “a brazen cocaine trafficking scheme.”
Aunt Flores is being prosecuted by the same Southern District which secured convictions for the would-be traffickers, under the first Trump administration.
A former bodyguard for Flores told Reuters she was aware of the drug trafficking. Jones thinks that’s accurate: “I believe the only way they would have been able to operate would have been with her assistance,” he claimed.
Flores had her political chops honed by Maduro’s predecessor, ex-president Hugo Chávez. He was imprisoned in the wake of a failed coup attempted in 1992.
