Venezuelan authorities on Monday offered a $1 million reward for information leading to the capture of Carlos Enrique Gómez Rodríguez, “El Conejo”, the leader of a criminal gang that last week clashed with police using long guns.
The director of the judicial police (CICPC), Douglas Rico, published on Twitter the “WANTED” posters of seven members of the gang, known by the alias of its leader and investigated in “multiple crimes of terrorism, extortion, kidnapping, homicide, among others”.
Gomez Rodriguez operates in the north-central state of Aragua and has been wanted for more than a year, although authorities have not mentioned him for months.
He came under the radar again last week after he led heavy clashes with the security forces in the town of Las Tejerías, which was devastated by an avalanche last October.
The gang allegedly attacked police commands in the area with long weapons. An armored vehicle crashed into a house in the middle of the shootout.
The astronomical reward is fixed in dollars, the de facto currency in an economy where the local currency, the bolivar, has lost value due to chronic inflation. One million dollars is equivalent to just over 186,000 minimum wages.
The authorities offered rewards in July 2021 for information leading to the whereabouts of the members of a gang that terrorized the Cota 905 neighborhood in Caracas, occupied by the police after violent clashes that left 26 dead.
Its main leader, Carlos Luis Reverte, alias “El Koki”, for whom half a million dollars was offered, was killed in February 2022 in Aragua, a region controlled by “El Conejo”.
Venezuela is, along with Honduras, the most violent country in Latin America, with almost 11,000 violent deaths between 2021 and 2022, according to the Venezuelan Observatory of Violence (OVV), a reference NGO in the absence of official figures.