Early life Hugo Armando Carvajal Barrios was born on 1 April 1960, in
Puerto La Cruz,
Anzoátegui state. He finished his studies at the military academy in 1981.
Career Carvajal met Hugo Chávez in 1980 at the
Military Academy of Venezuela, where Chávez was his instructor. Participants of that coup were granted a general amnesty from president
Rafael Caldera in 1994. In September 2008, the
United States Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) accused Carvajal of helping Colombian guerrilla
FARC in its drug trafficking activities by protecting them from drugs seizures, supplying weapons and providing with Venezuelan official documents. He was placed on the list together with
Henry Rangel Silva, Director of Venezuela's Directorate of Intelligence and Prevention Services, who later became Minister of Defense and Governor of
Trujillo and with
Ramón Rodríguez Chacín, former Minister of the Interior & Security. He was arrested in
Aruba on 22 July 2014 on a U.S. arrest warrant. Venezuelan President
Nicolás Maduro protested saying Carvajal had diplomatic immunity. On 28 July, he was released and flown back to Venezuela by private plane. Aruba officials declared that Dutch foreign minister
Frans Timmermans had decided to recognize Carvajal's immunity. The Netherlands declared Carvajal
persona non grata. Maduro expelled Carvajal from the Armed Forces on 4 April, degraded his Major General status, and accused him of treason.
Cocaine trafficking conspiracy charges Carvajal was arrested in Spain by local authorities in 2019 at the behest of the U.S. government. His extradition to the United States to stand trial for drug trafficking was not carried out after a Spanish court rejected the American request. The denial was appealed and then overturned in 2019 but Carvajal had disappeared by that point. In September 2021, he was arrested again by Spanish authorities after hiding out in Madrid for two years. His asylum claim was denied in October 2021 and his extradition was approved to go forward. The extradition was put on hold again after Carvajal appealed to the
European Court of Human Rights. Carvajal faced charges of trafficking cocaine to the U.S. in a "narcoterrorism" conspiracy while using weapons. On 13 July 2023, the European Court of Human Rights denied his request to avoid extradition, and five days later, Spain's High Court allowed for him to be immediately extradited to the United States. On 19 July 2023, he was extradited from Spain, arriving in New York. When he was arraigned in the Manhattan federal court on 20 July 2023, he pled not guilty. Joshua Goodman of the
Associated Press reported that Carvajal's attorneys said the prosecutor announced that no plea deal was offered. Journalist Antonio Maria Delgado wrote in the
Miami Herald that Carvajal claims to have evidence about Venezuela's involvement with Iran and Colombia's FARC, election tampering, espionage within the U.S., and Maduro's involvement with the gang
Tren de Aragua as a "paramilitary arm of the state". Goodman wrote that Carvajal might have information about the voting machine company
Smartmatic. According to Delgado, Carvajal's "cooperation could dramatically expand the U.S. government's understanding of Venezuela's deep state", but his claims would need to be independently verified as "Carvajal has a history of shifting loyalties and politically motivated statements". ==References==