Who Is Alvin Hellerstein? 92-Year-Old Judge Presides Over High-Stakes Case Against Maduro

Alvin Hellerstein, the 92-year-old US judge presiding over the case against deposed Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro, has overseen several high-profile trials during his long judicial career.

Maduro and

his wife, Cilia Flores, appeared before Hellerstein in his Manhattan courtroom on Monday, pleading not guilty to charges, including narco-terrorism. Maduro was indicted in 2020 in a wide-ranging drug trafficking case that has been before Hellerstein for nearly 15 years and has already resulted in the conviction of Venezuela’s former intelligence chief, Hugo Armando Carvajal, news agency AFP reported.

Hellerstein served As Lawyer In US Army For 4 Years

A Columbia University Law School graduate, Hellerstein served as a lawyer in the US Army from 1957 to 1960 before entering private practice. He was nominated by former President Bill Clinton in 1998 to serve as a district court judge for the Southern District of New York.

Over the years, Hellerstein has presided over multiple civil cases arising from the September 11, 2001 Al-Qaeda attacks in New York and Washington. He has also had several run-ins with President Donald Trump, including rejecting his request to move his New York hush money case to federal court.

Last year, Hellerstein blocked the Trump administration from deporting alleged Venezuelan gang members without a court hearing. In September, he sentenced tech entrepreneur Charlie Javice to more than seven years in prison for defrauding JPMorgan Chase in a $175 million deal. He also handed an 18-year sentence to Bill Hwang, founder of Archegos Capital Management, in a major fraud case, the report stated.

In another notable ruling last year, Hellerstein presided over a trial in which a jury found that BNP Paribas’s dealings in Sudan had helped prop up the regime of former ruler Omar al-Bashir, awarding $20.75 million in damages to three Sudanese plaintiffs. In a landmark 2015 decision, he ordered the US government to release photographs documenting abuse of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan.