Obama administration officials have confirmed to the "Wall Street Journal" that the evidence gathered against Cabello "are consistent" and that he would be at the head of a narcos group called "Cartel de los Soles", in which there would be a number of senior officers of the Venezuelan Army and other personalities of the Chavista movement.

It is not the first time for such rumours. Already a few years ago, government officials in Bogotá claimed that Generals of the Armed Forces of Caracas protected cocaine trafficking from Colombia and that this was going through some ports in the neighboring country. As time went by, after having tolerated it, the Venezuelan generals would begin to direct drug trafficking from Colombia to the United States. This is what would emerge from the affidavits of Leasmy Salazar, who has taken refuge in the United States, a former head of personal security of Hugo Chavez, former Venezuelan president who died two years ago.

The information by Salazar were confirmed by other sources, and in recent months, the US anti-drug agency with federal prosecutors in New York and Miami have instructed the case thanks to the testimonies of former drug traffickers, informants close to senior Venezuelan officials, and deserters from the Army.

The "Wall Street Journal" emphasizes that the deep economic and political crisis of Venezuela after the death of Chavez has facilitated the recruitment of informants and that these have brought evidence for investigations that could now end with a formal indictment of Cabello in the United States.

Last February, with a decree, President Obama declared Venezuela a threat to the United States of America and sanctioned seven senior officials with the block in the US of their millionaire bank accounts, business and real estate. In response, President Maduro appointed as minister one of the seven sanctioned, and has launched a signature campaign against the Obama decree.

On the eve of the death of Chavez, seriously ill with cancer, Diosdado was one of dolphin aspirants to the succession as the strong man linked to the armed forces in the regime, but the leader was more in favor of Maduro, especially because he could guarantee more the alliance with the Castro brothers’ Cuba that he considered untouchable in terms of ideology.

It was then that the socialist pro-Cuban Maduro and the military Cabello made a pact of non-aggression while retaining intact their respective spheres of influence. Diosdado Cabello has never cared about the ideological icon of Cuba for the "socialism of the XXI century". While Maduro goes always in Havana "for consultations", Cabello has set foot on the island only once, when it came to deciding on the division of power at the bedside of the dying Chavez.

So the investigation against Cabello should be read also in the key of the new scene from the turning point in relations between Cuba and the United States. Diosdado Cabello, and not Maduro, is the villain of the play, and now likely to end up like what was "the strong man" of Panama, Manuel Noriega that, for the partnership with the Colombian drug trafficker, Pablo Escobar, has spent 25 years in prisons of the United States and France.