The Government of Ecuador decreed on Thursday that the so -called Cartel dos Sóis – a criminal organization that, according to the United States, is led by Venezuela dictator Nicolás Maduro – will be officially treated as a terrorist group in the country. The measure was announced by President Daniel Noboa, who determined to the National Intelligence Center (CNI) the analysis of the presence and influence of this structure within the local gangs, to which the government declared war.
Noboa’s decree follows the line of the US government. At the end of July, the US Treasury Department, under the management of President Donald Trump, classified the Cartel dos Sóis as a terrorist entity and applied sanctions against its members.
The decision of the Ecuadorian President occurs after the American Attorney General Pam Bondi, to associate Maduro with drug trafficking and announce a reward of $ 50 million for information leading to the capture of the Chavista leader. In the document signed on Thursday, Noboa orders his country’s national intelligence system to act with services from other countries to identify connections between the cartel and the criminal networks operating in Ecuador.
Since the beginning of his term, Noboa has adopted a direct confrontation policy against organized crime. In January this year, the Aragua Train Transnational Criminal Group – emerged in Venezuelan prisons and is also linked to Maduro – as a terrorist organization, a few days after the United States made the same decision. Other factions, such as dissent of the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC) – including the border commands and the sinisterra -front front – also received this classification.
These organizations became a priority target of security forces in the state of “internal armed conflict” decreed by Noboa in 2024. The measure seeks to contain the escalation of violence that placed Ecuador at the top of the Latin American homicide rate, with an alarming average of at least one murder per hour in 2025.
Relations between Quito and Caracas have been broken since April, when Noboa ordered a police operation against Mexico’s embassy in Quito to arrest former vice-president Jorge Glas, convicted of corruption and protected by political asylum granted by the Mexican government.
In the United States, the accusations against Maduro are longtime. During his first term, Trump blamed the Venezuelan leader for crimes of drug trafficking and terrorism, pointing out that the Sobs Cartel would be headed by him and the regime’s senior officials and military personnel.
Venezuela Interior and Justice Minister Diosdado Cabello denied the accusations and said the cartel is a “invention” of the United States. Vice President Delcy Rodríguez asked Latin American countries to unite what he classified as “direct threats of military intervention” by Washington, after Trump defending troops to combat illicit drug cartels in the region.
