US Offers $50 Million Reward For Arrest Of Venezuelan President

The United States is now offering a $50 million reward for information that could lead to the arrest of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. This is twice the $25 million bounty announced by the US back in January. The Trump administration also accused him of being "one of the largest narco-traffickers in the world." In a video posted on X, US Attorney General Pam Bondi announced the higher reward and accused the Venezuelan president of working with criminal gangs to flood the country with drugs and violence. The Attorney General said that Maduro was a threat to US national security, and she also shared a hotline number for the public to report any information.

During Donald Trump’s first term, the US government brought charges against Nicolás Maduro and several senior Venezuelan officials, accusing them of crimes ranging from narco‑terrorism and corruption to drug trafficking. At that point, the Justice Department alleged that Maduro had collaborated with a Colombian rebel group to “use cocaine as a weapon to ‘flood’ the US.” According to the Attorney General, the US has seized more than $700 million in assets linked to Maduro, including two private jets and nine vehicles. She further asserted that tonnes of confiscated cocaine were traced straight back to the Venezuelan president.

Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yvan Gil slammed the new reward as “pathetic”, calling it nothing more than “political propaganda”. He accused the attorney general of using it as a “desperate distraction” from the public outrage over the handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case. Maduro has also previously denied US accusations that he is directly involved in drug trafficking. US sanctions on Venezuela began in 2017 and were steadily tightened over the following years as the South American nation’s political crisis escalated.

Even with US rewards in place, Nicolás Maduro has retained his grip on power after winning the 2024 presidential election, a vote denounced as a scam by the US, the European Union, and multiple Latin American nations. Last July, thousands of Venezuelans also took to the streets to protest Nicolás Maduro’s disputed election victory. Maduro, the leader of Venezuela's United Socialist Party, has been repeatedly accused of using violence to suppress political opponents and silence critics since he took power from Hugo Chávez in 2013.