A former US Green Beret who organised a failed 2020 cross-border raid to overthrow Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has been arrested in New York on federal arms trafficking charges.
An unsealed federal indictment from Tampa, Florida, accuses Jordan Goudreau and a Venezuelan associate, Yacsy Alvarez, of violating U.S. gun control laws when they allegedly assembled and shipped to Colombia AR-type weapons, ammunition, night vision scopes and other defense equipment that required a U.S. export license.
Goudreau, 48, was also charged with conspiracy, smuggling goods from the United States and illegal possession of a machine gun, among 14 other counts. He is being held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn.
Goudreau, who has been awarded the Bronze Star three times for his bravery in Iraq and Afghanistan, rose to fame in 2020 when he claimed responsibility for an amphibious raid by a group of soldiers who had trained in clandestine camps in neighboring Colombia.
He said he and others were acting to protect Venezuela’s democracy after Maduro’s 2018 re-election was boycotted by the opposition and condemned as undemocratic by the United States and dozens of other countries.
Two days before the raid, The Associated Press published an investigation detailing how Goudreau had spent months trying to raise money for the harebrained idea from the Trump administration, the Venezuelan opposition and wealthy Americans seeking to invest in Venezuela’s oil industry if Maduro were to be ousted.
Although Venezuela’s then-opposition leader, Juan Guaidó, was initially enthusiastic about the coup idea and signed a deal with Goudreau’s Melbourne, Florida-based startup, Silvercorp, to explore that option, financial support was scarce, and the country houses along Colombia’s Caribbean coast housing the would-be liberators suffered shortages of food, weapons and other supplies.
Despite the setbacks, the coup plotters comically, if tragically, carried on in what became known as the “Bay of Pigs.” The group was easily neutralized by Venezuelan security forces, who had already infiltrated it.
Two of Goudreau’s former Green Beret colleagues spent years in Venezuelan jails until a prisoner swap was arranged last year with other imprisoned Americans for a Maduro ally arrested in the United States on money laundering charges.
The arrest comes as Maduro is once again facing pressure over his increasingly authoritarian measures. On Sunday, Venezuelan electoral authorities declared him the winner of the presidential election, but a growing number of Western countries, including the United States, are refusing to recognize the results and demanding that Venezuela make public the counts from the different electoral districts.
Meanwhile, the opposition has presented records from 80% of the polling stations showing that its candidate, Edmundo González, defeated Maduro by a margin of two to one.
U.S. prosecutors documented the botched raid in their 22-page indictment, attaching text messages between the defendants about their effort to buy military-related equipment and export it to Colombia, and tracing a network of money transfers, international flights and large-scale purchases.
A November 2019 message sent by Goudreau to an equipment dealer said, “Here’s the list bro.” It included AR-15 rifles, night vision devices and ballistic helmets, prosecutors said.
“We definitely need our guns,” Goudreau wrote in a text message, according to the indictment.
In another message, prosecutors say, Alvarez asked Goudreau if she would “bring things” with her on an upcoming flight from the United States to Colombia.
Earlier this year, another Goudreau associate in the coup attempt, Cliver Alcalá, a retired three-star general in the Venezuelan Army, was sentenced in federal court in Manhattan to more than two decades in prison for providing weapons to drug-financed rebels.
Goudreau attended the trial but refused then and on other occasions to speak to the AP about his role in the raid. His lawyer, Gustavo J. Garcia-Montes, said his client is innocent but declined to comment further.
The U.S. Justice Department declined to comment. A lawyer for Alvarez, Christopher A. Kerr, told the AP that Alvarez is “seeking asylum in the United States and has been living here peacefully with other members of his family, several of whom are U.S. citizens.”
“She will plead not guilty to these charges this afternoon, and from now on, under our system, they are nothing more than accusations.”
Connect with the Voice of America! Subscribe to our channels Youtube, WhatsApp and to the newsletter. Activate notifications and follow us on Facebook, X and Instagram.
Add Comment