Ex-Green Beret Goudreau, Who Planned Failed Venezuela Coup, Is Arrested

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Ex-Green Beret Goudreau, Who Planned ******* Venezuela Coup, Is Arrested

A former U.S. Green Beret who orchestrated a disastrous ******* coup attempt against the authoritarian president Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela in 2020 was arrested Tuesday in New York on federal arms smuggling charges.

The federal authorities accused Jordan G. Goudreau, 48, and a co-conspirator, Yacsy Alexandra Alvarez, of exporting military-style rifles, night vision devices, lasers, silencers and other military equipment without a license to Colombia beginning in November 2019 for use in carrying out “activities in Venezuela,” the Justice Department said in

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The charges appear to refer to the botched cross-border raid carried out in May 2020 by dozens of armed, self-declared freedom fighters, including former Venezuelan soldiers and former ********* Special Forces operators, who aimed to topple Mr. Maduro.

Mr. Goudreau, of Melbourne, Fla., who did not participate in the raid, publicly took credit for the ******* incursion known as Operation Gideon, which he said he had planned with disaffected Venezuelan officials. The audacious rebellion left observers around the world wondering why a decorated former U.S. Special Forces soldier who had served several tours in Iraq and Afghanistan was leading a foreign insurrection.

A group of only about 60 men had planned to land on Venezuelan soil near the capital, Caracas, from speedboats and ultimately capture Mr. Maduro. But they were repelled by the Venezuelan security forces. Six men were ******* and 13 others were detained, including two former Green Berets who were said to have been recruited by Mr. Goudreau,

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The Americans were sentenced to 20 years in prison by the Venezuelan authorities in August 2020 but were released in

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with the ******* States late last year.

Mr. Goudreau and Ms. Alvarez, a Venezuelan national who lives in Tampa, Fla., face charges of *********** to violate export laws, smuggling goods from the ******* States and violating federal firearm export control acts, prosecutors said.

Mr. Goudreau faces additional charges of violating the National Firearms Act and unlawful possession of machine guns, prosecutors said.

The pair faces maximum prison sentences of five years for ***********, 10 years for smuggling, 20 years for export control law violations and 10 years for each violation of the National Firearms Act and unlawful possession of a machine ****, prosecutors said.

A lawyer for Mr. Goudreau could not be immediately reached Wednesday. Christopher A. Kerr, a lawyer for Ms. Alvarez, told The Associated Press that his client planned to plead not guilty.

The charges were announced just days after Venezuela’s electoral body declared Mr. Maduro the winner of another six-year term as president in a vote that was marred by widespread irregularities and rejected by the country’s opposition and other nations, including the ******* States.

Four years ago, Mr. Goudreau bragged about his involvement in the thwarted attempt to remove Mr. Maduro, a strong man known for overseeing Venezuela’s plunge into a chronic economic crisis and for using ********* to squash dissent and keep a stranglehold on the office he has held since 2013.

Mr. Maduro claimed at the time that the operation was a ******* coup attempt backed by the ******* States. The administration of President Donald J. Trump denied being “directly involved.”

Mr. Goudreau, the owner of a Florida-based security company called Silvercorp, claimed that the operation was the result of a multimillion-dollar agreement he had struck with the Venezuelan opposition, led by the U.S.-backed Juan Guaidó, who declared himself the legitimate leader of Venezuela.

An adviser to Mr. Guaidó told The New York Times that such an agreement had been briefly reached in October 2019 but was terminated within days by the opposition, and he said Mr. Goudreau had proceeded with the coup on his own.

Court documents detailed a long list of equipment and firearm orders made by Mr. Goudreau in 2019 and early 2020, message exchanges with associates and several trips he and Ms. Alvarez had made to Colombia.

According to federal prosecutors, in a text message to an associate in December 2019, Mr. Goudreau wrote, “We def need our guns,” when discussing what items to take on one trip.

Mr. Goudreau and Ms. Alvarez exported the firearms and other equipment to Colombia through Mr. Goudreau’s security firm, prosecutors said. Some of the items were seized by the Colombian authorities, they said.

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showed that Mr. Goudreau was being held at a Brooklyn detention center.

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