US veteran flees ahead of US trial over failed 2020 Maduro ouster plot

By Luc Cohen

NEW YORK, March 13 (Reuters) – A U.S. military veteran awaiting trial on U.S. charges concerning a failed May 2020 armed incursion to oust now-jailed Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has absconded and is a fugitive, federal prosecutors said on Friday. 

Marissel Descalzo, a lawyer for the defendant Jordan Goudreau, said, “We do not know where he is.” 

Goudreau, 49, was charged in 2024 with violating U.S. arms export control laws by conspiring to ship weapons to Colombia without the required U.S. export licenses. 

He pleaded not guilty and had been scheduled to go on trial in June in Tampa, Florida. 

In a court filing on Friday, prosecutors with the Tampa U.S. Attorney’s office asked a federal judge to declare Goudreau’s $2 million bail forfeited and enter a judgment against him in that amount. 

Goudreau, a special forces veteran who ran Florida-based security firm Silvercorp USA, claimed responsibility in 2020 for a maritime raid into Venezuela launched from Colombia that left eight people dead and more than a dozen in custody. He was arrested in the United States in 2024. 

The failed 2020 raid came less than two months after the U.S. unveiled a drug trafficking indictment against Maduro and announced a $15 million reward for information leading to his arrest. 

In January, the U.S. military captured Maduro in a dramatic overnight raid on his Caracas home and brought him to New York to face the charges. He has pleaded not guilty. 

(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York;Editing by Noeleen Walder, Rod Nickel)