The once “slam-dunk” drug case against the nephews of the Venezuelan first family is looking more fragile after a two-day hearing and subsequent court filings revealing that prosecutors’ key confidential sources are tainted with credibility problems.
When Efrain Campo, 29, and Francisco Flores, 30, were charged last year with conspiring to smuggle 800kgs of cocaine into the US, the federal government touted what it said was a strong case: undercover recordings of a massive drug deal, alleged confessions from the two defendants and informants who later said the cousins had done the deal to make money for the congressional campaign of their aunt, first lady Cilia Flores.
But now the US attorney’s office is facing questions about their case: whether the so-called voluntary confessions were in fact coerced, how the informants got in touch with the defendants and the propriety of accepting the word of informants, who acknowledge improper conduct while receiving money from the US, including snorting cocaine and hiring prostitutes. 
There are questions also about how much the US Drug Enforcement Administration knew about what its informants were doing.
“If I were them, I would be nervous,” David Weinstein, a former federal prosecutor who oversaw the narcotics division at the US attorney’s office in Miami, said of the prosecutors. “The way things are going, the case is not getting better. It’s getting weaker.”
Today, prosecutors and defence attorneys are expected to file competing briefs on whether US district judge Paul Crotty of the Southern District of New York should suppress the defendants’ alleged confessions and audio and video recordings of the informants’ meetings with the defendants, including images of the defendants allegedly handling a brick of cocaine.
The trial is expected to begin November 7.
The case against the nephews of Cilia Flores, a powerful Venezuelan lawmaker and wife of the country’s president, Nicolas Maduro, is being closely watched across the hemisphere as the two sides trade accusations of political corruption.
It’s largely seen in the US as further proof of corrupt ties between the Venezuelan government and illicit drug trafficking. But the Venezuelan government considers it another example of a vicious US campaign to discredit the Maduro government and drive him from power.
Going back to president George W Bush, the US has long charged that the Venezuelan government fails to adhere to international narcotics agreements, but President Barack Obama has gotten tougher, issuing a presidential determination this year that the Venezuelan government and security forces are “engaged in or facilitated drug trafficking.”
Eight current or former Venezuelan officials have been sanctioned for narcotics trafficking activities since 2008. In August, federal prosecutors charged Venezuelan General Nestor Luis Reverol Torres, the former general director of the country’s narcotics office, with participating in drug trafficking. He’s now the interior minister.
But the New York prosecutors have yet to make a direct connection between Campo’s and Flores’ alleged crimes and their powerful aunt or Maduro. The strength of the evidence they do have also has seemed to wane as more details emerge.
The prosecution argues the defendants voluntarily confessed after their arrest. The defendants say agents told them they might never see their kids again if they didn’t cooperate.
The DEA says an informant was contacted by a Venezuelan official with the same name as Cilia Flores’ brother. The defendants say they were “lured” by the informants who contacted them about a lucrative narcotics deal and that the informants said they would supply the planes, the cocaine and the buyer.
“They were picked out and targeted for a narcotics ‘sting’ operation, possibly for reasons of raw international politics,” defence attorney Randall Jackson said in a court motion seeking the identity of the informants.
Last week, prosecutors had to disclose new details about their informants that they themselves learned after the hearing. The informants, a father and son combo known as CS-1 and CS-2, respectively, also brought an unauthorised man into Venezuelan meetings to talk about and test the quality of the cocaine. CS-2 paid for the man’s trip using money received from the DEA on a past deal. CS-2 also promised the man $50,000 to $100,000 if the alleged cocaine deal was successful.