Who is Cilia Flores? The woman by Nicolás Maduro's side until Donald Trump threw them in detention

Cilia Flores has long been very close to power in Venezuela, and when the full force of the US military arrived at the door, she would be dragged alongside her husband to a New York court to face criminal charges.

Her partner of 30 years — the now deposed president of Venezuela Nicolás Maduro — had been the subject of Donald Trump's threats for months, but this storm had been brewing for years.

In the end, their movements across Caracas were studied and leaked by someone on the inside, a replica of their presidential compound was constructed and their extraction rehearsed. Trump said Maduro made it to the safe room, but never managed to close the door.

In a matter of hours, Venezuela had been plunged into darkness and Maduro and Flores were removed from their home and delivered to the bowels of USS Iwo Jima waiting off the coast. 

Today Cilia Flores, 69, fronted a Manhattan court and pleaded not guilty before being taken back to prison. 

She is listed on an indictment alongside her husband, his son and other members of Venezuela's elite that goes into elaborate detail about what the US believes about the scale of drug trafficking, corruption, as well as kidnappings, beatings and murders at the hands of the first couple. 

Flores has officially been charged with cocaine importation conspiracy, possession of machine guns and destructive devices, and conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices. 

When asked for her plea, she said: "Not guilty, completely innocent."  

Standing in court next to her husband, Flores appeared with bandages on her face after sustaining injuries while being captured by US forces, according to her lawyer. 

More than the wife of a president, Flores has been a political player in her own right. 

She is a longtime, staunch supporter of former president Hugo Chavez and devoted to his ideology, but more than just a follower, Flores positioned herself within his orbit. 

As his movement rose, so did Flores, growing from working class roots, to someone considered the most powerful woman in Venezuela. 

Hugo Chavez's lawyer 

Flores was born in 1956 in a small town in north-western Venezuela and lived with her five siblings in a mud-brick shack with a dirt floor. 

Maduro talked about his partner's early life in his 2013 campaign, saying she moved from the rural state of Cojedes to Catia, an area of western Caracas that became important to the Chavism movement. 

Flores was said to be a good pupil, studied hard and became a lawyer. She married a detective and had three boys, before something in her changed. 

In 1989, there were riots across Caracas over fuel price hikes and Flores would later say this moment ignited a "revolutionary calling" in her. 

By 1992, a group of revolutionaries who would go on to change Venezuela forever needed help with their defence, so Flores reportedly sent them a letter offering her services.

Chavez had been sitting in prison after two failed coup attempts and in 1994 Flores shot to national attention when she helped secure his release.

It was also around this time that Flores crossed paths with Maduro, who was part of Chavez's inner circle.  

She would continue to advise Chavez and form part of his campaign committee and by 1999, when he was sworn in as president, Flores had become a central figure in his so-called Bolivarian Revolution.

A year later she entered the country's national assembly and her ascendancy through the political ranks began, rising to the position of president of the legislature. 

She was the first woman to ever hold the job in Venezuela. The person she replaced was her boyfriend Maduro.

And while her political career was progressing, her personal life was helping to expand her sphere of influence too. 

She would leave the chamber when Chavez made her attorney general in 2011, but at that time Maduro was just a few years away from being anointed as her hero's successor. 

Cancer claimed Chavez's life in 2013 and Maduro stepped forward as the new leader of the movement with the full support of Flores and her power in the party. 

The pair married the same year they moved into the Miraflores Palace. 

When Maduro became president, Venezuela had a new leader and the ultimate power couple at the helm. 

Venezuela's power coupling

Maduro reportedly doesn't refer to Flores as the first lady because the language of Chavism ideology would make her the "first combatant". 

In 2013, just before he became president, Maduro said: "I've told her to get ready to be the first fighter of the fatherland, the first socialist, the first woman of the people of the barrios, of the streets." 

At the time, a senior member of the national assembly in Venezuela said "she will be Maduro's strong arm". 

"She has authority, the ability to command, and she is a woman who moves quietly," Reuters reported. 

That tracks with much of the commentary that has come since. Flores has appeared on her husband's presidential podcast, has even danced with him on television, and is always there a step behind or beside the leader, playing the role of a first lady.

But in private, she is said to be one of his most trusted and strategic advisers with a very secure seat at the table. 

One of Maduro's former intelligence advisers who has since fled to the US told Reuters: "Flores has always been behind the curtain, pulling the strings." 

The couple don't have children together, but raised several from previous marriages.  

Washington has accused Maduro and his inner circle of looting Venezuela of billions of dollars, but it is unclear how much wealth the couple hold.

When Trump's Department of Justice came for Maduro in March 2020, Flores wasn't on their list, but in the years that have passed, they have evidently become more confident in their case against her. 

The 'narco nephews' case

During her time in the National Assembly, Flores was sharply criticised for who she brought into the fold, namely members of her family and close associates. 

Critics accused her of using her influence to secure public jobs for her brothers, two nephews, two cousins and even her ex-husband, according to Reuters.

The union for legislature members accused her of replacing 50 National Assembly support staff with her own people. 

She denied any impropriety. 

"I feel proud that they are my family and I will defend them as workers in the assembly," she said at the time, accusing journalists who published the claims of trying to blackmail her.

Flores then led an effort to shut down access to the chamber for press other than state-owned media. 

When the first Trump administration indicted Maduro in 2020, Flores wasn't listed as a co-accused, but when that document was updated and then unsealed a few days ago, her name and list of alleged crimes was there. 

Just as the US Department of Justice, under Donald Trump, has been building its case against Maduro, his wife has long been in their sights too.

In 2017, when the US Treasury Department sanctioned Maduro, it included Flores and other members of his inner circle. 

Maduro was enraged, saying in response: "If you want to attack me, attack me. But don’t mess with Cilia, don't mess with the family."

The US had long been investigating the presidential family, in particular via the so-called "narco nephews" case. 

And the newly unsealed indictment references that investigation as it details the fresh allegations against Venezuela's first lady.  

In the indictment, the US has accused Maduro and Flores of "ordering kidnappings, beatings and murders against those who owed them drug money or otherwise undermined their drug trafficking operation." That includes the killing of a local drug boss in Caracas, according to the indictment.

Flores is also accused of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes in 2007 to arrange a meeting between "a large-scale drug trafficker" and the director of Venezuela’s National Anti-Drug Office. 

It is alleged that in a corrupt deal, the drug trafficker then agreed to pay a monthly bribe to the director of the anti-drug office as well as about $US100,000 for each cocaine-carrying flight "to ensure the flight's safe passage." Some of that money then went to Flores, the indictment says.

The indictment also alleges her nephews were heard during recorded meetings with confidential US government sources in 2015 agreeing to send "multi-hundred-kilogram cocaine shipments" from Maduro's "presidential hanger" at a Venezuelan airport. 

The nephews during the recorded meetings explained "they were at 'war' with the United States," the indictment alleges. 

They were both sentenced in 2017 to 18 years in prison for conspiring to send tons of cocaine into the US before being released in 2022 as part of a prisoner swap in exchange for seven imprisoned Americans. 

The Maduro and Flores matter is due to return to court on March 17. 

ABC/Reuters