The U.S. Department of Justice on Thursday charged Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and 14 current and former officials with money laundering and other charges in an alleged narco-terrorism conspiracy to "flood" the United States with cocaine.

In a livestreamed press conference, U.S. Attorney General William Barr said that Maduro, and other political and military leaders across the Venezuelan government, had worked with a dissident group of rebel fighters to provide safe passage through its airspace in order to move between 200 and 250 metric tons of the drug to locations in North America.

The indictments, in Manhattan, Miami and Washington, D.C., were the result of a decadelong investigation of Venezuela's support for the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, or FARC, a guerrilla movement with deep ties to the international drug trade, and described widespread "criminality and corruption" in the highest levels of Venezuela's government.