The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) carried out a secret year-long operation that "sent covert operatives to Venezuela" to capture dozens of delinquents, criminals and drug traffickers connected to dictator Nicolás Maduro's regime (him included), according to an exclusive report revealed by The Associated Press.
As part of "Operation Money Badger," the U.S. sent operatives to "surreptitiously record and build drug trafficking cases against the country's leaders." According to the report, Alex Saab, a criminal and frontman of Maduro, was arrested. Saab was recently released in a trade for 10 American prisoners kidnapped in Venezuela. According to the 15-page memo, dated 2018, obtained by AP:
It is necessary to conduct this operation unilaterally and without notifying Venezuelan officials.
The DEA is "the police of the world"
Regarding the possible violation of International Law that the U.S. could have committed by carrying out the operation, Wes Tabor, a former DEA official - who would not confirm the existence of the memo - assured that the agency is "the police of the world" although he admits they don't like to recognize it "publicly":
We’re not in the business of abiding by other countries’ laws when these countries are rogue regimes and the lives of American children are at stake (...) And in the case of Venezuela, where they’re flooding us with dope, it’s worth the risk.
The document was drafted at the time of "maximum pressure" exerted by the U.S. to remove Maduro (while former President Donald Trump was in office). This required approval from the Sensitive Activities Review Committee (SARC), "a secretive panel of senior State and Justice Department officials that is reserved for the most sensitive DEA cases involving tricky ethical, legal or foreign policy considerations."
The memo was not to be made public. However, it was published by mistake on a website "among dozens of government exhibits" used in the bribery conspiracy trial late last year of two former DEA supervisors who were part of the offensive against the Maduro regime. AP said the document "was removed hours after an AP reporter started asking about it."
