A former director of Venezuelan military intelligence, Hugo Carvajal, pleaded guilty on Wednesday to drug trafficking and narcoterrorism charges in U.S. federal court, the Justice Department said in a statement.

Carvajal, 65, once one of the most powerful figures in the Venezuelan government, pleaded guilty to four criminal counts including narcoterrorism conspiracy, conspiracy to import cocaine, and weapons charges. He faces a maximum of life in prison.

"The deeply troubling reality is that there are powerful foreign government officials who conspire to flood the United States with drugs that kill and debilitate," Jay Clayton, the interim U.S. attorney in Manhattan, said in a statement.