Venezuelan journalist Carlos Salazar revealed during a broadcast on Wednesday that his sources believe that Venezuelan Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello, wanted in the United States on narco-terrorism charges, is blocking search and rescue crews from accessing buildings destroyed by last week’s earthquakes to protect stashes of drugs and cash buried there.
Salazar spoke to the Latin American news network NTN24 and said a team of Venezuelan journalists in exile estimate that Cabello has hidden as much as $250 million dollars in cash in anywhere from 120 to 250 apartment complexes, many of which collapsed during the earthquakes.
“In this moment, they are desperate, because in some zones of Vargas, of La Guaira, they are not looking for people with life so that they do not find the boxes… of cash that would belong to Diosdado Cabello,” the journalist alleged. La Guaira, known before the socialist era as Vargas state, was the center of the earthquakes and the most devastated area in the country. The state is located on the coast of Venezuela near Caracas, the national capital, which also suffered significant building destruction.
Venezuela suffered two major earthquakes on June 24, one a magnitude 7.5 and one 7.2. As a result of the incompetent construction of many buildings by the socialist regime in the past two decades, in particular affordable housing complexes, hundreds of building are believed to have crumbled. The American space agency NASA estimated this week that as many as 60,000 buildings were damaged by the earthquakes.
Salazar noted as bizarre the fact that Cabello, as interior minister, was in the streets attempting to direct emergency personnel, given that his main job in the Venezuelan regime is to control its repressive state security forces.
“Diosdado Cabello is personally in the field risking himself because he is sharing [terrain] with elements from other countries, especially the United States. He has personally lead search and rescue operations for his money; we are talking about of $250 million,” Salazar claimed. He also suggested that Cabello may have hidden cocaine in some of the destroyed buildings and is trying to protect it.
Salazar emphasized that witnesses on the ground verified to him that Cabello was blocking entry to certain buildings and neighborhoods without explanation.
The accusations follow the documentation of several bizarre events in the aftermath of the earthquakes, including Cabello caught on video appearing to personally block an American search and rescue team from accessing the rubble of a building in which rescuers asserted survivors remained, and a group of Venezuelan socialist police getting caught looting bags of large amounts of cash from the rubble of a building. Salazar claimed that the incident with the Americans occurred in an area known as the “Esplanade” and that, as of press time, no one has been allowed to enter it.
The dramatic video of the incident shows Cabello, through a translator, speaking to American emergency personnel. The American leading the group can be heard saying, “There is somebody right over there that we’re trying to help… You don’t want us to help the person over there?”
The U.S. State Department, in a statement to NTN24, described the video as capturing an “unfortunate misunderstanding” that was rapidly resolved.
“Both sides were clearly trying to save lives after the devastating earthquakes… The incident was resolved rapidly and both groups were able to continue their respective efforts to respond to the earthquakes and offer support to the Venezuelan people,” the statement concluded.
The police officers caught attempting to loot bags of American cash from a building were intercepted on camera by local women, who pulled the money out of their hands and ripped it apart.
Rodríguez’s government claimed to detain the officers, working with the Scientific, Penal, and Criminalistic Investigation Service Corps (CICPC), and are investigating them for illicit actions.
“They came here and knew there was money,” one woman, Melisa Páez, told the Venezuelan outlet El Pitazo. “I don’t know if they were sent here or if they’re acting on their own, but it can’t be right that, in the midst of our dead, the only thing on their minds is recovering material possessions.”
Diosdado Cabello is a longstanding member of the socialist narco-regime and often described as one of the most powerful people within Maduro’s inner circle. The State Department is offering up to $25 million for information leading to his capture and accuses him of being a top leader in the Cartel of the Suns, a cocaine-trafficking operation that works through the Venezuelan military. His profile on the State Department website accuses him of having:
Coordinated with the FARC in furtherance of the narco-terrorism conspiracy in order to transport and distribute large cocaine shipments; benefit[ted] from, and cause others to participate in, the provision of heavily armed security to protect the cocaine shipments; cause[d] large quantities of previously-seized cocaine to be sold to drug traffickers in exchange for millions of dollars; interfere[d] with drug-trafficking investigations and pending criminal cases in Venezuela and elsewhere; and help[ed] provide the FARC with military-grade weapons, including machine guns, ammunition, rocket launchers, and explosives equipment.
The Venezuelan regime, led by “interim president” Delcy Rodríguez, was quick to welcome American forces into the country, and the U.S. State Department is pledging at least $300 million in humanitarian aid to help the rescue and survival efforts. The alliance between Rodríguez and Cabello is a fragile one, however, especially given Cabello’s history of struggling, unsuccessfully, to replace deposed dictator Nicolás Maduro.