A drug informant who helped the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration build some of its biggest cases has been arrested and charged with scheming to extort major cocaine traffickers facing extradition from Colombia and the Dominican Republic.

Six Americans who had been detained in Venezuela in recent months have freed by the government of President Nicolás Maduro after he met with a senior Trump administration official.

A Venezuelan businessman who helped hide almost $17 million in bribe payments by an ally of President Nicolas Maduro was sentenced to six months in prison Friday by a federal judge who expressed frustration that his cooperation with law enforcement was undone by President Joe Biden’s recent pardon of a top U.S. criminal target.

Newly unsealed court records show that a Colombian businessman linked to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was secretly signed up by the Drug Enforcement Administration as a cooperating source in 2018 and gave agents information about bribes he paid to Venezuelan officials.

A businessman accused of siphoning off millions in state contracts from Venezuela has pleaded not guilty in a high profile case that’s strained relations between Washington and Caracas.

A businessman accused of siphoning off millions in state contracts from Venezuela met secretly with U.S. law enforcement to provide intelligence against Nicolás Maduro’s government prior to being charged.

Knowledgeable sources and message exchanges reveal that Venezuela’s government quietly offered last year to release imprisoned Americans in exchange for the U.S. letting go a key financier of President Nicolás Maduro.

Federal prosecutors have unveiled criminal charges against an alleged corruption ring accused of paying millions of dollars in bribes to a top ally of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to profit from lucrative contracts to import food and medicine at a time of widespread hardship in the South American country.

A businessman who prosecutors say was a major conduit for corruption by Nicolás Maduro’s inner circle has appeared for the first time in Miami federal court after an extradition that has further strained relations between the U.S. and Venezuela’s socialist government.

Venezuela’s socialist government said it would suspend negotiations with its opponents in retaliation for the extradition to the U.S. of a close ally of President Nicolás Maduro to face money laundering charges.

There is an economic relationship; the murkier aspects have attracted the scrutiny of the U.S. Treasury Department. There is solidarity in their anti-U.S. rhetoric, even if the United States is a key trading partner of Turkey. The alliance was on display Tuesday when Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu visited Caracas to sign agreements and mark the 70th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the two countries. We should keep going," the Turkish foreign minister said. In an analysis for the Washington-based Wilson Center, he described the relationship between Turkey and Venezuela as an alliance of convenience."

A man wearing a face mask amid the COVID-19 pandemic passes a mural of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in Caracas, Venezuela, Wednesday, July 22, 2020. There may well be a collective sigh of relief in Venezuela from those he targeted, said Michael Diaz, a Miami defense attorney who has litigated against Nadler on behalf of Venezuelan clients. In June, he secured the arrest in Cape Verde of Colombian businessman Alex Saab as Maduros alleged front man was en route to Iran. Nadler, who still has a few weeks on the job, has not indicted Saab for the alleged food corruption. Nadler began working Venezuela cases in 2017, and Diaz said he quickly won a reputation as an aggressive prosecutor who had a good rapport with agents.