MIAMI —The former chief of Venezuela’s highest court was indicted Thursday in Miami federal court on charges of granting legal favors in exchange for bribery payments that he diverted through local bank accounts and spent on chartered private jets, expensive watches, luxury goods and real estate in South Florida.
Maikel Moreno, who was president of the Supreme Tribunal of Justice from 2017 to 2022, is charged with laundering money and related offenses stemming from $10 million in bribes that prosecutors say he accepted from politically connected white-collar defendants who sought breaks in their high-stakes fraud and financial cases in Venezuela.
Moreno, who remains a supreme court justice and is living in Venezuela, was initially charged by a criminal complaint in Miami in March 2020 — the same day President Nicolas Maduro and others were charged in New York with narcoterrorism.
