CARACAS – Venezuela’s Directorate General of Military Counterintelligence (DGCIM) is reportedly bringing in new personnel and strengthening its operational capacity under its new director, Germán Gómez Lárez, raising renewed questions about oversight of an intelligence agency repeatedly accused of serious human rights violations.
Gómez Lárez was appointed head of the DGCIM on March 18, replacing Gustavo González López after acting President Delcy Rodríguez named González López minister of Defense. The appointment was formalized by presidential decree.
The personnel changes form part of a broader reorganization of Venezuela’s military and security leadership under Rodríguez. Days after González López took over the Defense Ministry, the government also replaced several senior commanders of the Armed Forces.
What remains less clear is whether the changes at the top represent a substantive transformation of Venezuela’s intelligence and security apparatus or primarily a reshuffling of its leadership.
The DGCIM has for years faced allegations of arbitrary detention, torture and mistreatment of detainees. United Nations investigators and international human rights organizations have documented serious abuses attributed to members of Venezuela’s security and intelligence structures.
Among the former senior officials who have faced international scrutiny is Iván Hernández Dala, who headed the DGCIM between 2014 and 2024. The European Union has maintained sanctions against him, citing serious human rights violations allegedly committed by DGCIM personnel under his command, including torture, excessive force and mistreatment of detainees.
González López, now Venezuela’s Defense Minister, has also been sanctioned internationally. The EU states that while he headed the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service, or SEBIN, officials under his authority committed arbitrary detention, torture and other forms of cruel and inhuman treatment.
Those findings and allegations concern specific periods and officials. Individual criminal responsibility ultimately has to be established through competent judicial proceedings.
Other DGCIM officers, including Alexander Granko Arteaga, have also been accused by victims and human rights organizations of involvement in abuses. Such accusations similarly require attribution to their sources and should not be treated as criminal convictions.
The broader issue is whether the security structures associated with past abuses are being dismantled or merely reorganized.
Rodríguez’s government has changed senior military commanders, but several figures with longstanding links to the Venezuelan security establishment continue to occupy powerful positions. González López’s promotion is particularly significant: after being appointed DGCIM director in January, he was moved to the Defense Ministry only two months later.
Gómez Lárez was then placed in charge of the DGCIM with an official mandate to strengthen mechanisms for protecting the state and maintaining stability.
Reports that the organization is now recruiting additional personnel and increasing its operational capacity therefore raise another question: how is that expansion being financed?
As a state intelligence organization, the DGCIM operates with Venezuelan public resources. However, detailed and independently audited information showing the agency’s current operating budget, recruitment expenditures, equipment purchases and authorization of those expenditures is not readily available publicly.
That lack of transparency makes it difficult to determine the financial scale of the reported expansion or precisely how much Venezuela is spending on military counterintelligence.
It also complicates efforts to evaluate whether institutional reform is actually taking place.
Changing directors, reorganizing commands or closing controversial detention facilities would not by themselves address longstanding accountability concerns. A more fundamental break with past practices would require transparent investigations of alleged abuses, scrutiny of chains of command and meaningful oversight of the institutions and public resources involved.
For the Rodríguez government, the issue is therefore becoming larger than who currently leads the DGCIM.
If Venezuela wants to demonstrate that its security apparatus has entered a different era, the test will be whether institutional changes are accompanied by transparency, independent investigations and accountability.
Without those measures, an expansion of personnel and operational capacity risks being viewed not as reform of the DGCIM, but as reinforcement of essentially the same security structure under new leadership.