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In 2013, Nicolás Maduro became president of Venezuela following the death of his charismatic predecessor Hugo Chávez. Since then, the country’s cocaine trade has undergone revolutionary changes. Today, Venezuela is at risk of becoming the world’s fourth cocaine-producing country. And the Maduro regime has positioned itself as the gatekeeper to the country’s drug trade, controlling access to cocaine’s riches not only for drug traffickers but also for corrupt politicians and the military-embedded trafficking network known as the “Cartel of the Suns.”

The product of more than three years of investigations, hundreds of interviews and field work in all of Venezuela’s key drug trafficking territories, this InSight Crime investigation looks at one of the world’s most important cocaine trafficking hubs – and the authoritarian regime that keeps the drugs flowing.

NewsAnalysis