CARACAS/WASHINGTON, March 3 (Reuters) – The Trump administration is quietly preparing legal proceedings against Venezuela’s interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, including drafting a criminal indictment, one of several tools it is using to strengthen its influence over Caracas, according to four people familiar with the matter.
Federal prosecutors have assembled possible corruption and money laundering charges and told Rodríguez that she risks prosecution unless she continues to comply with Trump’s demands following the U.S. ouster of former Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro in January, the sources said.
Reuters has not seen the written charges being prepared against Rodríguez, but spoke to four people briefed on the matter. The news agency is the first to report the effort to draw up the preliminary indictment against Delcy Rodríguez for alleged money laundering and corruption, which, according to sources, was communicated verbally to her.
The federal prosecutor’s office in Miami is preparing draft indictments, the people said, adding that the document has been evolving over the past two months. The investigation focuses on Rodríguez’s alleged involvement in laundering funds from Venezuela’s state oil company PDVSA, three of the sources said, and covers activities between 2021 and 2025, two of the sources said.
The Justice Department declined to comment on the news. After a summary of the report was published on the Reuters World News morning podcast, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche wrote on X: “Completely FALSE from @reuters. I don’t know how fake news like this gets published.”
In a statement, Reuters said: “We stand by our reporting that the Department of Justice is preparing an indictment against Delcy Rodríguez, the new president of Venezuela.”
Continues after advertising
The White House and the US State Department did not respond to Reuters’ questions about this story.
In addition to the preliminary indictment, U.S. authorities presented Rodríguez with a list of at least seven former party officials, associates and their family members who they want her to arrest or keep in Venezuelan custody for possible extradition, four sources said. This was first reported by the Spanish newspaper ABC.
Rodríguez faces this threat just two months after taking power, following a lightning operation by US special forces that captured Maduro and took the authoritarian leader to New York to stand trial for narcoterrorism and cocaine trafficking. Maduro has pleaded not guilty and is being held in New York awaiting trial.
In public, Trump praised Rodríguez for cooperating with the US and hailed Venezuela as “our new friend and partner” in his annual State of the Union address.
But the preliminary indictment is yet another bargaining chip that the United States has added in its attempt to force members of the Venezuelan government, previously loyal to Maduro, to comply with its wishes.
Venezuela’s Ministry of Communications, which handles all press inquiries for the government, did not respond to a detailed list of questions about the possible charges being drawn up against Delcy Rodríguez.
Continues after advertising
The drafting of an indictment does not necessarily indicate that a case will be presented by a prosecutor to a grand jury, who would then have to determine whether there is probable cause to believe that Rodríguez committed a crime. Grand juries meet in secret, and Reuters was unable to determine whether prosecutors have begun presenting any evidence against Rodríguez to a grand jury.
Since the capture of Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, on Jan. 3, Trump has relied on Rodríguez, Maduro’s 56-year-old former vice president, to ensure stability in Venezuela while prioritizing U.S. companies’ access to the OPEC member country’s oil reserves.
Flores also pleaded not guilty to federal charges, including drug trafficking.
Continues after advertising
Other members of Rodríguez’s government who have already been indicted in the United States include his hardline Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello and Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino, who, along with Rodríguez, are longtime members of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, or PSUV, founded by the late Hugo Chávez. Cabello and Padrino, both still in power in post-Maduro Venezuela, have consistently denied any wrongdoing.
Many of the people the U.S. wants Rodríguez to arrest or hold already have charges in the United States for money laundering, drug trafficking and other crimes, according to four sources familiar with the matter.
Laura Dogu, the newly appointed US envoy to Venezuela, presented the request to Rodríguez, the sources told Reuters.
Continues after advertising
Among the high-profile names introduced to Rodríguez is Alex Saab, 54, who rose to prominence as a close ally of Maduro and became one of the Chavista movement’s most influential financial operators, according to four sources.
Following an Interpol warning requested by the United States, Saab was previously arrested by local authorities in Cape Verde in 2020 while traveling to Iran on an official mission for the Maduro government. Extradited to the United States, he faced bribery and money laundering charges for allegedly diverting $350 million from a corrupt Venezuelan housing construction scheme through the US financial system, before being released in 2023 by the Biden administration in a prisoner exchange.
Reuters reported that Saab was arrested in early February and two sources said he remains detained by the Venezuelan intelligence service Sebin. The U.S. has a new, classified money laundering indictment against Saab, two of the sources said, but its status is not known.
Continues after advertising
If extradited, Saab could provide information to US authorities that could strengthen the criminal case against Maduro, according to a source briefed on the case.
It is unclear whether Saab, a Colombian who received Venezuelan citizenship from Maduro, will be extradited to the United States. Venezuelan law prohibits the extradition of Venezuelan citizens, which represents an obstacle for several people wanted by Washington.
Saab’s United States lawyer, Neil M. Schuster, did not respond to detailed questions about whether Saab was detained, any charges he may be facing or whether he offered any testimony about Maduro during his previous detention in the United States.
Other names on the list include media mogul Raul Gorrín, who was also detained by Sebin in Venezuela last month, according to three sources familiar with the matter.
Gorrín faces several federal charges in the US, mainly related to bribery, money laundering and corruption involving Venezuela’s state oil company, PDVSA.
Gorrín did not respond to emails and text messages seeking comment, nor did his media company Globovisión.
Howard Srebnick, a Miami attorney who previously represented Gorrín, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
