Hugo Carvajal

From left to right: Hugo Chávez, businessman Richard Boulton, his wife Marena Bencomo, and Carvajal. Carvajal worked actively in the resolution of the kidnapping of Boulton in Colombia

Hugo Armando Carvajal Barrios, nicknamed El Pollo ("The Chicken") (born April 1, 1960), is a Venezuelan diplomat, retired general and narcoterrorist. He was the head of the military intelligence in Venezuela during Hugo Chávez's government, from July 2004 to December 2011. Carvajal was arrested in Spain on 12 April 2019 based on an arrest warrant from the United States for 2011 drug trafficking charges. After the Spanish courts approved his extradition to the United States Carvajal went into hiding. On 26 March 2020, the U.S. Department of State offered $10 million for information to bring him to justice in relation to drug trafficking and narco-terrorism. In 2021 he was arrested in Madrid and was extradited two years later to the United States. In 2025, he pled guilty to all criminal charges. 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".