Meet The Turk, one of the world's top three drug lords

Ever since he swept to power on a Left-wing, 'anti-imperialist' ticket, drugs have been one of the most bitter points of contention between Hugo Chavez and his 'Norteamericano' foes.

Claims that Venezuela has deliberately turned a blind eye to the trafficking of vast quantities of United States-bound cocaine have been furiously denied by the country's president, who insists it is just another Washington plot to discredit him.

Now, though, backing for the US version of events has come from an unlikely, if arguably well-informed source - an alleged Venezuelan drug lord who claims that dozens of 'top-level' figures around the Chavez administration, including ministers, generals and judges, were on his payroll.

Walid 'The Turk' Makled, a portly Venezuelan of Syrian descent described as 'the king of kingpins' by US officials, went on trial in Venezuela earlier this month, where he faces indictment over an alleged $1.4?billion (pounds 1?billion) drug empire that he claims was built with help from Chavez officials.

A part-owner of a Venezuelan airline called Aeropostal, Mr Makled, 48, is said to have pioneered the use of passenger airliners to export cocaine from Latin America, a bigger, faster shipping method than the small private jets and boats traditionally used by smugglers.

One of his planes, a DC-9 nicknamed 'Cocaine One' by drug enforcement officials, allegedly had nearly six tons of the drug on board when it was searched by police in Mexico; cocaine was stashed in 120 suitcases scattered across the 90 passenger seats, according to a separate indictment brought in New York.

Mr Makled, whom the US says is one of the world's top three drug barons, is said to have exported up to 10 tons of 'product' out of Latin America every month, some of it heading across the Atlantic to lawless West Africa, which serves as a 'transit warehouse' for the market in Britain and Europe.

But as he sits in a high-security court in the steamy Venezuelan capital, Caracas, attention is focused not so much on how he formed the drug world's equivalent of a budget carrier, rather on those who assisted him in doing so.

Much of the trial is behind closed doors, but to the embarrassment of the Venezuelan authorities, Mr Makled has already given several jail cell interviews in neighbouring Colombia, where he was arrested, saying he paid millions of dollars in monthly bribes to high-ranking Venezuelan civilian and military officials, as well as a relative of a government minister.

He claims to have paid $5?million to a naval commander to get a concession to run a warehouse at Puerto Cabello, Venezuela's main port, which is known as a drug-smuggling centre.

'If I'm a drug trafficker, everyone in the Chavez government is a drug trafficker,' said Mr Makled, who also faces charges of money laundering and murder. Asked how he had recruited the 40 generals, colonels and majors allegedly on his books, he smiled: 'It was more like they recruited me.'

The Chavez regime has dismissed Mr Makled's claims as the words of a condemned man trying to deflect blame from himself, with the president describing the defendant as a pawn of the CIA.

However, the allegations will fuel Washington's long-running anger over the Venezuelan president's refusal to cooperate in the war on drugs, which he sees as largely a problem created by wealthy North Americans.

In 2005, Mr Chavez, who famously once referred to President George W Bush as 'the Devil', kicked out officials from the US Drug Enforcement Administration, accusing them of spying. Caracas has claimed to have upped its efforts against drugs since then, but its own figures show the amount of cocaine seized dropped by almost half between 2005 and 2010.

Washington, which insists that Venezuela is 'demonstrably failing' in counter-narcotics efforts, claims drug exports from Colombia via Venezuela have increased, helped by corrupt links between the Venezuelan military and traffickers from Colombia's Farc guerrillas. The United Nations, meanwhile, says that Venezuela is now the source of more than half the cocaine seized at sea en route to Europe.

Vanda Felbab-Brown, a drug expert at The Brookings Institution, the Washington think tank, told The Sunday Telegraph that the trial could provide evidence of 'high level' official involvement.

'There have been many, often credible allegations of the complicity of Venezuelan officials in the drug trade,' she said. 'Areas bordering Colombia are a major springboard for the cocaine trade onward, and the Venezuelan military is widely believed to be taking a cut on the trade, with complicity reaching high levels of the government. Mr Makled's testimony provides some of the most concrete details of such high-level complicity.'

Mr Makled was arrested in Colombia in 2010, having been on the run since 2008, when three of his brothers were arrested during a raid at a family ranch in Venezuela where more than half a ton of cocaine was found. He denies the charges against him, and says the drugs were planted by the Venezuelan government in order to seize his business interests and stop one of his brothers campaigning to become a local mayor.

Much to the disappointment of the US, which was keen to extradite Mr Makled, Colombia decided to hand him over for trial in Venezuela, a gesture designed partly to improve previously poor relations with Mr Chavez.

The Venezuelan leader feared that, had Washington got its hands on Mr Makled, officials would have used his testimony to justify a Venezuelan version of the US military operation that toppled drug-dealing Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega in 1989.

Paranoid as it might sound, the fear seems to have been justified, according to Mr Makled.

'With the corruption that exists in Venezuela, I've got enough for [the US] to intervene,' he told one interviewer last year, claiming to know of cocaine laboratories guarded by the Venezuelan government. 'All it would take is for me to show the US government what I've got in my hands, and they could intervene in Venezuela immediately.'