Washington, Jan 17 (AP) When President Donald Trump announced the audacious capture of Nicolas Maduro to face drug trafficking charges in the US, he portrayed the strongman's vice president and longtime aide as America's preferred partner to stabilise Venezuela amid a scourge of drugs, corruption and economic mayhem.

Left unspoken was the cloud of suspicion that long surrounded Delcy Rodríguez before she became acting president of the beleaguered nation earlier this month.

In fact, Rodriguez has been on the radar of the US Drug Enforcement Administration for years and in 2022 was even labelled a “priority target,” a designation DEA reserves for suspects believed to have a “significant impact” on the drug trade, according to records obtained by The Associated Press and more than a half dozen current and former US law enforcement officials.

The DEA has amassed a detailed intelligence file on Rodríguez dating to at least 2018, the records show, cataloging her known associates and allegations ranging from drug trafficking to gold smuggling.

One confidential informant told the DEA in early 2021 that Rodriguez was using hotels in the Caribbean resort of Isla Margarita “as a front to launder money,” the records show. As recently as last year she was linked to Maduro's alleged bag man, Alex Saab, whom US authorities arrested in 2020 on money laundering charges.

The US government has never publicly accused Rodriguez of any criminal wrongdoing. Notably for Maduro's inner circle, she's not among the more than a dozen current Venezuelan officials charged with drug trafficking alongside the ousted president.

Rodriguez's name has surfaced in nearly a dozen DEA investigations, several of which remain ongoing, involving agents in field offices from Paraguay and Ecuador to Phoenix and New York, the AP learned. The AP could not determine the specific focus of each investigation.

Three current and former DEA agents who reviewed the records at the request of AP said they indicate an intense interest in Rodriguez throughout much of her tenure as vice president, which began in 2018. They were not authorised to discuss DEA investigations and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The records reviewed by AP do not make clear why Rodriguez was elevated to a “priority target,” a designation that requires extensive documentation to justify additional investigative resources. The agency has hundreds of priority targets at any given moment, and having the label does not necessarily lead to being charged criminally.

“She was on the rise, so it's not surprising that she might become a high-priority target with her role,” said Kurt Lunkenheimer, a former federal prosecutor in Miami who has handled multiple cases related to Venezuela. “The issue is when people talk about you and you become a high-priority target, there's a difference between that and evidence supporting an indictment.” Venezuela's Communications Ministry did not respond to emails seeking comment.

The DEA and US Justice Department also did not respond to requests for comment. Asked whether the president trusts Rodríguez, the White House referred AP to Trump's earlier remarks on a “very good talk” he had with the acting president Wednesday, one day before she met in Caracas with CIA Director John Ratcliffe.

Almost immediately after Maduro's capture, Trump started heaping praise on Rodriguez — this past week referring to her as a "terrific person — in close contact with officials in Washington, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

The DEA's interest in Rodriguez comes even as Trump has sought to install her as the steward of American interests to navigate a volatile post-Maduro Venezuela, said Steve Dudley, co-director of InSight Crime, a think tank focused on organised crime in the Americas.

“The current Venezuela government is a criminal-hybrid regime. The only way you reach a position of power in the regime is by, at the very least, abetting criminal activities,” said Dudley, who has investigated Venezuela for years. “This isn't a bug in the system. This is the system.” Those sentiments were echoed by opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who met with Trump at the White House Thursday in a bid to push for more US support for Venezuelan democracy.

“The American justice system has sufficient information about her,” said Machado, referring to Rodriguez. “Her profile is quite clear.” Rodriguez, 56, worked her way to the apex of power in Venezuela as a loyal aide to Maduro, with whom she shares a deep-seated leftist bent stemming from her socialist father's death in police custody when she was only 7 years old.

Despite blaming the US for her father's death, she steadily worked while foreign minister and later vice president to court American investment during the first Trump administration, hiring lobbyists close to Trump and even ordering the state oil company to make a USD 500,000 donation to his inaugural committee.

The charm offensive flopped when Trump, urged on by Rubio, pressured Maduro to hold free and fair elections. In September 2018,the White House sanctioned Rodriguez, describing her as key to Maduro's grip on power and ability to “solidify his authoritarian rule.” She was also sanctioned earlier by the European Union.

But those allegations focused on her threat to Venezuela's democracy, not any alleged involvement in corruption.

“Venezuela is a failed state that supports terrorism, corruption, human rights abuses and drug trafficking at the highest echelons.

There is nothing political about this analysis,” said Rob Zachariasiewicz, a longtime former DEA agent who led investigations into top Venezuelan officials and is now a managing partner at Elicius Intelligence, a specialist investigations firm. “Delcy Rodriguez has been part of this criminal enterprise.” The DEA records seen by AP provide an unprecedented glimpse into the agency's interest in Rodríguez. Much of it was driven by the agency's elite Special Operations Division, the same Virginia-based unit that worked with prosecutors in Manhattan to indict Maduro.

One of the records cites an unnamed confidential informant linking Rodriguez to hotels in Margarita Island that are allegedly used as a front to launder money. The AP has been unable to independently confirm the information.

The US has long considered the resort island, northeast of the Venezuelan mainland, a strategic hub for drug trafficking routes to the Caribbean and Europe. Numerous traffickers have been arrested or taken haven there over the years, including representatives of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman's Sinaloa cartel.

The records also indicate the feds were looking at Rodriguez's involvement in government contracts awarded to Maduro's ally Saab — investigations that remain ongoing even after President Joe Biden pardoned him in 2023 as part of a prisoner swap for Americans imprisoned in Venezuela.

The Colombian businessman rose to become one of Venezuela's top fixers as US sanctions cut off its access to hard currency and Western banks. He was arrested in 2020 on federal charges of money laundering while travelling from Venezuela to Iran to negotiate oil deals helping both countries circumvent sanctions.

The DEA records also indicate agents' interest in Rodriguez's possible involvement in allegedly corrupt deals between the government and Omar Nassif-Sruji, the brother-in-law of her longtime romantic partner, Yussef Nassif. Nassif-Sruji and Nassif did not respond to emails and text messages seeking comment.

Companies registered by the two brothers in Hong Kong received more than USD 650 million in Venezuelan government contracts between 2017 and 2019 to import food and dialysis medicine, according to copies of the contracts obtained in 2021 by Venezuelan investigative journalism outlet Armando.info.

Taken together, the DEA investigations underscore how power has long been exercised in Venezuela, which is ranked as the world's third most corrupt country by Transparency International.

For Rodriguez, they also represent something of a razor-sharp sword over her head, breathing life to Trump's threat soon after Maduro's ouster that she would “pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro” if she didn't fall in line. The president added that he wanted her to provide the US “total access” to the country's vast oil reserves and other natural resources.

“Just being a leader in a highly corrupted regime for over a decade makes it logical that she is a priority target for investigation,” said David Smilde, a Tulane University professor who has studied Venezuela for three decades. “She surely knows this, and it gives the US government leverage over her. She may fear that if she does not do as the Trump administration demands, she could end up with an indictment like Maduro.” (AP) GRS GRS