MIAMI — Venezuela’s post-Maduro purge reached the country’s highest court on Friday, as six justices of the Supreme Tribunal of Justice were formally notified of their forced retirement — including Maikel Moreno, the former chief justice who spent nearly a decade as the judicial enforcer of Chavista authoritarian rule and who carries active U.S. criminal charges and a $5 million American bounty on his head.
Venezuelan lawyer and former prosecutor Zair Mundaray announced Friday that six members of the Supreme Tribunal of Justice had been notified of their forced retirement. Among those removed are Henry José Timaure, president of the Civil Chamber with military rank in the National Armed Forces; Carmen Alves of the same chamber; Malaquías Gil Rodríguez, a member of the Political-Administrative Chamber and of the Judicial Commission responsible for appointing judges nationally; and Maikel Moreno Pérez, member of the Criminal Chamber, who carries active sanctions imposed by the United States government.
The removals were framed administratively as “jubilaciones” — retirements — a mechanism that allows the Rodríguez government to clear the bench without formally charging or prosecuting the outgoing justices.
The distinction matters: it is a purge dressed as a personnel procedure, maintaining the appearance of institutional normalcy while achieving the political objective of replacing Maduro-era loyalists with figures aligned with the new power structure.
Who is Maikel Moreno
To understand what Friday’s removal means, you need to understand what Maikel Moreno represented in Venezuela's judicial system — and why Washington spent years trying to bring him to account.
Moreno served as president of Venezuela’s Supreme Tribunal of Justice from 2017 until 2022 — the court’s most powerful position. During his tenure, he was sanctioned by the United States Treasury Department, the European Union, Canada, Panama, Switzerland, and Mexico for actions that included stripping authority from Venezuela’s elected National Assembly, permitting Maduro to govern by decree, and directing lower-court judges to release specific defendants or dismiss particular cases in exchange for bribes.
The U.S. Department of State charged Moreno in March 2020 in the Southern District of Florida with money laundering and engaging in monetary transactions in property derived from specified unlawful activity. The State Department subsequently offered a $5 million reward for information leading to his arrest and conviction, classifying him as a participant in transnational organized crime.
His biography reads like a documentary of the Chavista system’s endemic rot.
Before ascending to the bench, Moreno was indicted for murder in 1987, imprisoned for two years, then released. He went on to work as a bodyguard for President Carlos Andrés Pérez before reorienting his career toward law and intelligence. Under the Chávez administration, he prosecuted government opponents in the wake of the 2002 coup attempt, building a reputation as a reliable instrument of political persecution.
He rose through the system precisely because of that reliability — and he presided over Venezuela’s highest court as an extension of executive power rather than a check on it.
His removal from the bench does not mean he faces justice. The “retirement” mechanism used by the Rodríguez government provides no pathway to accountability for the years of judicial corruption and human rights violations that occurred under his oversight. It is an institutional housekeeping measure, not a reckoning.
The Broader Purge
Friday’s judicial removals did not emerge from nowhere. They are the latest phase of a systematic consolidation of power that Delcy Rodríguez has been executing since she assumed the acting presidency on January 5, three days after U.S. forces captured Nicolás Maduro.
The judicial restructuring follows weeks of signals. Rodríguez publicly announced a “judicial reform” and declared that Venezuela must move toward “another justice that does not criminalize violence.”
The National Assembly, chaired by Jorge Rodríguez — Delcy’s brother — activated a preliminary commission to designate new TSJ magistrates, framing the vacancies as the result of “resignation and retirement.”
Venezuelan attorney Zair Mundaray had been warning since February that the purge was coming, writing publicly that Rodríguez aimed to use the TSJ restructuring to “dismantle the Maduro-Flores mafia that continues to control the system.” He described the mechanism as “express retirements, incorporation of alternates, and express designations,” and noted that opposition legislators in the National Assembly were negotiating their own quota of magistrates — suggesting the purge is not purely ideological but transactional.
Reports from Venezuelan journalists indicate that up to 12 of the TSJ’s 20 principal magistrates could ultimately be removed — a majority replacement of the country’s highest court. If that figure is accurate, what is being described as a reform is in practice a near-total reconstitution of the Venezuelan judiciary under Rodríguez’s authority.
The stated rationale — removing magistrates loyal to the imprisoned Maduro-Flores power couple — provides political cover. The practical effect is to replace judges who served one authoritarian structure with judges who will serve the new one.
What This Means for Venezuela’s Transition
The TSJ purge is the third pillar of a power consolidation strategy that Rodríguez has been executing with notable speed and discipline since January.
The first pillar was executive: replacing seventeen ministers, detaining businessmen, and projecting an image of clean governance to satisfy the Trump administration’s conditions for maintaining the easing of sanctions.
The second was legislative: installing Jorge Rodríguez as National Assembly president, ensuring family control over the parliamentary branch. The third — now underway — is judicial: reconstituting the Supreme Tribunal with figures loyal to the new dispensation rather than the old one.
The purge has been characterized by Venezuelan legal observers as completing “the circle of impunity and control” that Rodríguez began with the designation of a new attorney general and public defender — meaning that the prosecution, defense, and now the judicial bench are all being aligned under the same political authority.
This is the Venezuela that Colombia’s Gustavo Petro arrived to negotiate with on Friday — a country in the middle of a comprehensive restructuring of its institutional power, with a leader who has moved faster and more deliberately than most outside observers anticipated.
The Petro-Rodríguez meeting, the TSJ purge, and the ongoing question of whether Venezuela’s transition represents genuine reform or the construction of a new authoritarian architecture are all part of the same story.
Sociedad Media has been tracking Rodríguez’s consolidation of power since January. This article will be updated as the full list of removed magistrates is confirmed and as the National Assembly proceeds with new appointments.
