Exclusive: US turns up heat on Venezuela with threat to indict new leader Delcy Rodriguez

The Trump administration is quietly building a legal case against Venezuelan interim president Delcy Rodriguez including readying a draft criminal indictment, one of several tools it is using to strengthen its leverage with Caracas, according to four people familiar with the matter.

Federal prosecutors have put together possible corruption and money laundering charges, and have communicated to Rodriguez that she is at risk of prosecution unless she continues to comply with Trump’s demands following the U.S. ouster of former Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro in January, the sources said.

Reuters has not seen ‌the charges in written form being prepared against Rodriguez but spoke with four people briefed on the matter. The news agency is the first to report the effort to craft the draft indictment of Rodriguez for alleged money laundering and corruption, which the sources said Rodriguez had been made aware of verbally.

The U.S. Attorney's Office in Miami is preparing the draft charges, the people said, adding that the document has been evolving over the past two months. The probe focuses on Rodriguez’s alleged involvement in laundering of funds from Venezuela’s state oil company PDVSA, three of the sources said, and covers activities between 2021 and 2025, two of the sources said.

The Department of Justice declined to comment on the story. After a summary of the report was published on the Reuters World News morning podcast, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche wrote on X, “completely FALSE from @reuters. Not sure how such fake news makes its way to publication.”

In a statement, Reuters said: “We stand by our reporting that the Department of Justice is preparing an indictment against Delcy Rodriguez, the new president of Venezuela.”

Separate from the draft indictment, U.S. officials have presented Rodriguez with a list of at least seven former high-level party officials, associates and their family members that it wants her to arrest or to keep in Venezuela’s custody for potential extradition, four sources said. This was first reported by Spain’s ABC newspaper.

Rodriguez is facing this threat just two months after taking power following a lightning raid by U.S. special forces who captured Maduro and whisked the longtime authoritarian leader away to New York for trial on charges of narcoterrorism and cocaine trafficking. Maduro pleaded not guilty and is being held in New York pending trial.

In public, Trump has heaped praise on Rodriguez for cooperating with the U.S. and hailed Venezuela as “our new friend and partner” in his annual State of the Union address.

But the draft indictment is yet another bargaining chip the United States has added as it attempts to compel members of the Venezuelan government, once loyal to Maduro, to carry out its wishes.

The drafting of an indictment does not necessarily indicate a case will be presented by a prosecutor to a grand jury, which would then have to find there is probable cause to believe Rodriguez committed a crime. Grand juries meet in secret, and Reuters was unable to determine whether prosecutors had begun presenting any evidence against Rodriguez to a grand jury.

Other members of Rodriguez’s administration who already have been indicted in the United States include her hard-line Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello, and Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino, who are, along with Rodriguez, longtime members of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, or PSUV, founded by the late Hugo Chávez. Cabello and Padrino, both still in power in post-Maduro Venezuela, have consistently denied wrongdoing.

Many of the individuals whom the U.S. wants Rodriguez to arrest or keep in detention already have indictments in the United States for money laundering, drug trafficking and other crimes, according to four sources familiar with the matter.

Laura Dogu, the newly appointed U.S. envoy to Venezuela, put the request to Rodriguez, the sources told Reuters.

Among the high-profile names given to Rodriguez is Alex Saab, 54, who rose to prominence as a close Maduro ally to become one ⁠of the most influential financial operators within the Chavista movement, according to four sources.