Who Is Maduro’s Wife, Cilia Flores?
By Kejal Vyas
The U.S. said its operation in Venezuela led to the capture of strongman leader Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, who is often referred to by the Venezuelan president as the “first combatant.”
Flores was a top legal adviser to the ruling party for decades, serving as the lead defense attorney for Hugo Chavez, Maduro's predecessor and political mentor, in the early 1990s.
She rose through the party ranks as a lawmaker after Chavez took office as president in 1999. Flores married Maduro shortly after he became president in 2013, following Chavez's death from cancer.
Flores was among a group of senior regime figures sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury in 2018 for allegedly plundering Venezuela's wealth and facilitating the country's military dictatorship.
Last month, the U.S. financially blacklisted several members of her extended family for alleged corruption in their business dealings with the government. Those penalized included two of Flores’s nephews, who were convicted of cocaine trafficking in the U.S. but were granted clemency by the Biden administration in 2022 as part of a prisoner swap between the two countries.
Small wonder we took her too....She seems to be the brains and the muscle.