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U.S. increases bounty to $50M for Venezuela's Nicolas Maduro
The Trump administration on Thursday increased the bounty to $50 million for Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. File Photo by Ronald Pena R./EPA-EFE
Aug. 7 (UPI) -- The United States on Thursday doubled its bounty for Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to $50 million, ramping up pressure on the authoritarian leader that began during the first Trump administration.
The U.S. Departments of State and Justice announced the increased reward, stating that the fortune will go to anyone with information that leads to the arrest and/or conviction of Maduro.
Today, @TheJusticeDept and @StateDept are announcing a $50 MILLION REWARD for information leading to the arrest of Nicolás Maduro. Attorney General Pamela Bondi (@AGPamBondi) August 7, 2025
In a recorded statement, Attorney General Pam Bondi said it was an "historic" reward, accusing Maduro of using drug cartels that the Trump administration has designated as foreign terrorists to smuggle narcotics -- and violence -- into the United States.
The Drug Enforcement Administration has seized 30 tons of cocaine that Bondi said is connected to Maduro and his associates and nearly 7 tons linked directly to the Venezuelan president, Bondi said, adding that her Justice Department has confiscated some $700 million of Maduro-linked assets, including two private jets.
"He is one of the largest narcotraffickers in the world, and a threat to our national security," she said.
"Under President Trump's leadership, Maduro will not escape justice and he will be held accountable for his despicable crimes."
Venezuela has rebuked the accusations, with Caracas' foreign minister, Yvan Gil Pinto, describing the Trump administration's reward as "pathetic" and "the most ridiculous smoke screen we have ever seen."
"This lady puts on a media circus to please Venezuela's defeated far right," he said in a statement on Telegram, referring to Bondi.
"Her show is a joke -- a desperate distraction from her own miseries. The dignity of our homeland is not for sale. We repudiate this crude political propaganda operation."
Maduro was a target of the first Trump administration's failed so-called maximum pressure campaign of sanctions and political pressure to coerce the Venezuelan leader to step down after his re-election to another six-year term in late 2018 was deemed illegitimate.
In 2020, the United States charged Maduro, and other members of his regime, with being a leader of the Cartel de los Soles Venezuelan drug-smuggling gang, with the State Department at the time offering up to $15 million for information that could lead to his arrest and conviction.
That bounty was then increased to $25 million during the final days of the Biden administration, which had tried to usher in a democratic shift in the country, in retaliation as evidence showed he had lost the July 2024 presidential election.
Since returning to the White House in January, Trump has led an administration focused on the border and immigration, seeking to stop migrants and drugs entering the United States and working to deport migrants already here.
Latin American gangs have been a focus of this effort, with the State Department in February designating five of them, including the Venezuelan cartel Tren de Aragua, as foreign terrorist organizations and specially designated global terorrists.
Trump then in a mid-March executive order claimed that TDA was "perpetrating an invasion of and predatory incursion into the United States," in order to invoke the Alien Enemies Act to mass-deport Venezuelans -- a move that has since been blocked by the courts.
