Dear Editor,
For years, Caribbean leaders told their people that Venezuelan largesse was about friendship, solidarity, and South–South cooperation. They posed for photos, signed communiqués, and praised Caracas as a generous partner. Now Nicolás Maduro stands indicted in the United States for running a narco‑state machine, accused of using his government to move cocaine, launder money, and entrench a corrupt ruling elite. If the money that oiled those political friendships is now described as criminal proceeds, then the uncomfortable question cannot be dodged any longer: what does that make the hands that accepted it?
This is not about guilt by rumor; it is about accountability by principle. The indictment paints a picture of a Venezuelan state apparatus fused with the cocaine economy, where diplomatic channels, visas, security forces, and state companies formed part of a transnational trafficking and enrichment network. When a government is alleged to be structurally financed through narcomoney and corruption, the old excuse of “we were just doing normal diplomacy” no longer holds for its regional partners. The moral ground shifts: any country that treated that regime’s “gifts” as benign development assistance is now standing on terrain that looks a lot more like complicity, or at best willful blindness.
The Caribbean already has case studies of what Venezuelan “solidarity” looked like on the ground. In Jamaica, investigations into Petrojam exposed a sludge of waste, crony contracts, and politicised hiring under the umbrella of PetroCaribe, with public resources flowing to insiders while accountability stalled. In Haiti, more than US$2 billion in PetroCaribe funds simply evaporated across ministries and projects, prompting mass protests when citizens realised that “anti‑imperialist” oil had in fact underwritten one of the worst corruption scandals in the country’s modern history. These were not isolated accounting errors. They showed how a programme sold as South–South generosity turned into a regional conveyor belt for misappropriation, patronage, and quiet enrichment — all rooted in Venezuelan barrels, Venezuelan credit, and now, if prosecutors are right, Venezuelan cocaine money.
Guyana is not outside this story. Under PPP/C administrations, the country tapped into PetroCaribe, shipping rice and importing oil in arrangements that left Venezuela as one of Guyana’s major creditors. Over time, questions piled up about the PetroCaribe Fund itself: large inflows, substantial obligations to Caracas, but only a fraction of the expected balance showing on the books after monies were drawn down and shifted into the Consolidated Fund. Even before Maduro’s current legal troubles, independent observers and the Auditor General flagged the need to explain how that Venezuelan sourced money was spent, who benefited, and why core details remained murky. Today, with Maduro cast in a U.S. courtroom as the head of a criminal enterprise, those unanswered questions no longer sit in a grey zone of “technical accounting” — they carry the sharper edge of possible proceeds‑of‑crime risk.
This is where the double standard becomes unbearable. Across the region, ordinary citizens can be prosecuted for merely handling funds linked to crime — a bank transfer from the wrong person, a vehicle bought with suspect cash, a small business that did not ask enough questions. They do not need to be part of the original cartel to face charges; concepts like willful blindness and failure of due diligence are enough. Yet when political leaders sign oil ‑for ‑loans deals with a regime long flagged by international watchdogs for corruption and narco links, the system suddenly becomes timid. Titles, protocol, and “non‑interference” are invoked as shields. Criminal money, it seems, becomes magically less dirty once it crosses a border under diplomatic cover.
In Guyana, the contradiction is even starker. On one hand, the PPP‑led government frames Venezuela as an existential threat over the border controversy. On the other, senior PPP figures have been happy to be photographed warmly engaging with Maduro in recent years, even as sanctions, reports, and indictments accumulated around his regime. Citizens are entitled to ask: what was discussed behind those smiles? Were there understandings, explicit or implicit, about debts, political support, or mutual silence? And how does a government justify cozying up to a leader now described as a narco boss abroad while preaching rule of law and integrity at home?
None of this means that Caribbean governments automatically share Maduro’s criminal liability. But it does mean that they cannot pretend to be innocent bystanders who just happened to benefit from his cheque book. At minimum, they were willing counterparties to a state that many already suspected was rotting from the inside; at worst, they allowed their economies and political projects to be greased by funds that may have originated in the cocaine trade. The region cannot simply breathe a sigh of relief that “Maduro is finally facing the music” and move on. If the music is about narco money and systemic corruption, then the entire orchestra of enablers and beneficiaries needs to be examined.
Real accountability would start with some very concrete steps. Every Caribbean government that benefited from PetroCaribe and related schemes should commission independent forensic audits of all inflows, project spending, and write offs linked to Venezuelan facilities, with findings published in full. All side letters, sweetheart restructurings, and political donations or in‑kind campaign support traceable to Caracas should be disclosed, even if that discomforts today’s incumbents. Where irregularities are found, local law‑enforcement and anti‑money‑laundering units should treat them as potential proceeds‑of‑crime cases, not as “sensitive diplomatic legacies” to be quietly buried.
For Guyana, this is an opportunity to prove that talk of good governance is not just a weapon against opponents. The government can invite an independent investigation into the PetroCaribe Fund, explain every significant transfer and beneficiary, and open its Venezuelan‑related dealings to parliamentary and public scrutiny. It can articulate, on the record, what its ministers knew and believed about the nature of the Venezuelan regime at the time these arrangements were deepened and later when they embraced Maduro on public platforms. And it can pledge that any future engagement with Venezuela — whoever governs in Caracas — will be subject to strict anti‑corruption safeguards, transparent contracts, and robust oversight.
Silence is not neutrality. When leaders accept money and political cover from a regime now painted as a criminal enterprise, they do not get to simply look away when the spotlight finally arrives. Maduro should absolutely face the fire if the allegations are proven — but it is intellectually and morally dishonest to pretend that the story ends with him in a U.S. courtroom. The region must now ask, loudly and relentlessly: if the money was dirty, who helped circulate it, who built careers and mansions upon it, and who will be held to account? Until those questions are answered with evidence, not slogans, the taint of narco solidarity will continue to cling not just to Caracas, but to every capital that feasted on its spoils.