Feds arrest ex-US Green Beret in connection to failed 2020 raid of Venezuela to remove Maduro

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — A former U.S. Green Beret who in 2020 organized a failed crossborder raid of Venezuelan army deserters to remove President Nicolás Maduro has been arrested in New York on federal arms smuggling charges.

A federal indictment unsealed this week in Tampa, Florida, accuses Jordan Goudreau and a Venezuelan partner, Yacsy Alvarez, of violating U.S. arms control laws when they allegedly assembled and sent to Colombia AR-styled weapons, ammo, silencers, night vision goggles and other defense equipment requiring a U.S. export license.

Goudreau, 48, also was charged with conspiracy, smuggling goods from the United States and unlawful possession of a machine gun, among 14 counts. Goudreau appeared in federal court following his Tuesday arrest in Manhattan but it was not clear a day later whether he would be released from custody pending trial. He was being held at a federal detention center in Brooklyn.

Goudreau, a three-time Bronze Star recipient for bravery in Iraq and Afghanistan, catapulted to fame in 2020 when he claimed responsibility for an amphibious raid by a ragtag group of soldiers that had trained in clandestine camps in neighboring Colombia. He said he and others were acting to protect Venezuela’s democracy after Maduro’s 2018 reelection was boycotted by the opposition and condemned as undemocratic by the U.S. and dozens of other countries.

Two days before the incursion, The Associated Press published an investigation detailing how Goudreau had been trying for months to raise funds for the harebrained idea from the Trump administration, Venezuela’s opposition and wealthy Americans looking to invest in Venezuela’s oil industry should Maduro be removed.

While then-opposition leader Juan Guaidó was initially enthused by the coup idea, signing an agreement with Goudreau to explore such an option, little financial support arrived and the rural homes along Colombia’s Caribbean coast that housed the would-be liberators suffered from a lack of food, weapons and other supplies.

Despite the setbacks, the coup plotters went forward in a comical if tragic way in what was widely ridiculed as the “Bay of Piglets,” in reference to the 1961 Cuban fiasco. The group was easily mopped up by Venezuela’s security forces, which had already infiltrated the group. Two of Goudreau’s former Green Beret colleagues spent years in Venezuela’s prisons until a prisoner swap last year with other jailed Americans for a Maduro ally held in the U.S. on money laundering charges.

The arrest comes as Maduro is once again facing pressure over his increasingly authoritarian moves. Authorities on Sunday declared him the winner in the country’s presidential election but a growing chorus of western states, including the U.S., refuse to recognize the results, demanding Venezuela release individual precinct tallies. Meanwhile, the opposition has presented records from 80% of the polling booths showing that its candidate, Edmundo González, defeated Maduro by a two-to-one margin.

Prosecutors in their 22-page indictment documented the ill-fated plot, citing text messages between the defendants about their effort to buy military-related equipment and export it to Colombia, and tracing a web of money transfers, chartered flights and large-scale purchases.

One November 2019 message from Goudreau to an equipment distributor said: “Here is the list bro.” It included AR-15 rifles, night vision devices and ballistic helmets, prosecutors said.

“We def need our guns,” Goudreau wrote in one text message, according to the indictment. Prosecutors said he also identified a storage unit in Phoenix, Arizona, where an unnamed associate — who the AP has learned was another former Green Beret — would pick up the ammo.

In another message, prosecutors said, Alvarez asked Goudreau if she would be “taking things” with her on an upcoming flight from the U.S. to Colombia.

The equipment was shipped to Miami. Separately, Goudreau purchased several components to assemble about 60 AR-type firearms. Prosecutors said he also spent $90,000 on a used yacht — named Silverpoint, according to AP reporting — that left U.S. waters in February 2020 with Goudreau, an associate and several cans of ammo, body armor plates and magazines for AR-15 rifles.

A month later, Colombian police found at a checkpoint near the Caribbean city of Santa Marta the stockpiled gear in the back of a car hired by Alvarez. From there, the plot — or at least Goudreau’s involvement in it — quickly unraveled.

Alvarez was an associate of a Venezuelan businessman who was so close to the government of the late Hugo Chávez that he spent almost four years in a U.S. prison for trying to cover up clandestine cash payments to its allies.

Franklin Durán was also the owner of the Venezuela-registered Cessna Citation II that was sometimes used to transport Alvarez and Goudreau, an AP investigation found. Durán over two decades has had numerous business ties with the socialist government of Venezuela, making him an odd choice to help a band of would-be-mercenaries overthrow Maduro. He was arrested in 2020 by Maduro for his involvement in the plot.

The U.S. indictment makes no mention of Durán but does say that in furtherance of the conspiracy, Goudreau, Alvarez and unnamed others did travel on at least three occasions on a private airplane between Miami’s Opa-Locka airport and the Colombian city of Barranquilla, where Alvarez and Goudreau registered a Colombian affiliate of his Melbourne, Florida-based company Silvercorp.

Earlier this year, Goudreau’s main partner in the would-be coup, Cliver Alcalá, a retired three-star Venezuelan army general, was sentenced in Manhattan federal court to more than two decades for providing weapons to drug-funded rebels in an unrelated case.

Goudreau attended the court proceedings and wrote a letter praising Alcalá as a freedom-loving patriot who deserved to have his sentence reduced. But he refused then and on other occasions to speak to AP about his role in the attempted coup. His attorney, Gustavo J. Garcia-Montes, said his client is innocent but declined further comment.

The U.S. Justice Department declined to comment. An attorney for Alvarez, Christopher A. Kerr, told AP that Alvarez is “seeking asylum in the United States and has been living here peacefully with other family members, several of whom are U.S. citizens.”

“She will plead not guilty to these charges this afternoon, and as of right now, under our system, they are nothing more than allegations.”

If convicted, Goudreau and Alvarez face between 5 and 20 years in prison for each of the violations in the indictment.

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Mustian reported from Miami. Tucker reported from Washington.