Scandals Point to Venezuela as Key Drug-Industry Base : Narcotics: A succession of events forces Caracas to acknowledge that the nation has become central to large-scale trafficking.

CARACAS, Venezuela —  In June, the chief of military intelligence was fired after a luxury car he imported found its way to a drug-trafficking suspect.

That same month, a former governor of the Caracas federal district was charged with financing a narcotics ring and a publisher’s wife was found shot to death in what her father called a drug-related killing.

In July, intruders ransacked the home of another publisher whose newspaper had been waging an anti-drug campaign. A former military intelligence agent accused of taking part in the raid died in police custody, circumstances unclear.

The succession of events, combined with record seizures of cocaine, prompted the government to acknowledge that Venezuela has become a major base of drug trafficking.

Venezuelans used to believe the nation’s oil wealth shielded them from the development of a large-scale narcotics industry like that in neighboring Colombia.

Then came Colombia’s declaration of war on the drug barons in August, 1989. As clandestine sea and air routes used by the traffickers were closed off, more cocaine bound for the United States and Europe was routed through Venezuela.

Colombia and Venezuela have a sparsely populated, poorly controlled frontier that stretches for more than 1,200 miles. Venezuelan anti-drug agents say rivers like the Orinoco, which winds from the border to the Atlantic Ocean, are ideal for traffickers.

“How could you spot a drug shipment down there?” asked the officer in charge of an anti-drug unit.

In the year after the Colombian drug war was declared, Venezuelan authorities seized more than 11,000 pounds of cocaine. Previous record seizures had been in the hundreds of pounds.

Officials estimate seizures in the first five months of 1991 at about 20,000 pounds. They say it represents only 5% of the cocaine moving through Venezuela.

“We are no longer a bridge, but an operation base,” said President Carlos Andres Perez, who called for a war on drugs “waged at home and at school, at work and at parties.”

“This will be a total battle for the nation’s dignity and for its salvation,” he said in a speech broadcast to the nation June 21.

Perez cited the arrest in June of Adolfo Ramirez Torres, who was governor of Caracas in 1983-1985, as an example of the seriousness of the problem.

Ramirez Torres, a former member of the president’s Democratic Action Party, was identified as the chief financier of a drug network by two Venezuelans arrested on drug charges in Canada. Ramirez Torres surrendered to police and has denied the charge.

Gen. Herminio Fuenmayor, director of the military intelligence, was dismissed after failing to explain why the BMW he imported was found in the garage of Edwin Rincon, suspected of trafficking in drugs.

Fuenmayor claims to be the victim of a campaign against the military by what he describes as anti-democratic forces.

Lorena Marquez, wife of Manases Capriles, a prominent newspaper publisher in the industrial city of Maracay, was found dead at her home in June.

Capriles said his wife, shot once in the heart, committed suicide. Her father, Andres Galdo, a well-known newspaper columnist, claims she was killed after discovering her husband was trafficking in drugs.

Galdo said the absence of a significant amount of blood at the scene indicated the body had been moved. He also said no traces of gunpowder were found on his daughter’s hands.

Police have offered contradictory theories, first calling the death a homicide, then a suicide. Capriles was detained for investigation, but released without charge.

Murky circumstances surround the death in July of Winston Vivas Useche, a police intelligence agent.

An official statement said he shot himself to death in a police station bathroom with a pistol stolen from another officer.

Vivas Useche, formerly in military intelligence, was being interrogated about a break-in at the home of Rafael Poleo, publisher of El Nuevo Pais.

Some newspaper reports, including those in El Nuevo Pais, have contended that Vivas Useche was killed by his colleagues and suggested military involvement in drug trafficking.