Venezuela is offering a $1 million reward for information leading to the capture of “El Conejo” (The Rabbit), a notorious criminal gang leader who recently clashed with law enforcement with automatic weapons.

“Wanted. Carlos Enrique Gomez Rodriguez aka ‘El Conejo’. Reward: $1,000,000,” read posters tweeted by Judicial Police Director Douglas Rico.

Six other members of the group are also wanted, without authorities offering a reward.

According to the poster, “El Conejo,” who has been wanted for more than a year, is accused of “terrorism, extortion, kidnapping, homicide and more,” including drug trafficking.

His name appeared in the media again last week, after violent clashes between police and his gang in Tejeria, a city in the north-central state of Aragua, 80 kilometers from Caracas (where a landslide in November killed dozens).

According to local media, the gang allegedly attacked police stations in the area. In photos posted on social media, an armored vehicle crashes into a house, while the sound of automatic weapons can be heard.

The $1 million figure — in US currency — is astronomical in Venezuela, a country in crisis where the local currency, the bolivar, has been losing value due to chronic inflation.

In July 2021, the authorities had already offered large sums of money to find the members of a gang that was infesting the Cota 905 neighborhood of Caracas. Police had stormed the neighborhood during clashes in which 26 people had lost their lives.

A reward of $500,000 had been offered for information on the great leader of the gang, Carlos Luis Reverte, called “El Coqui”, who was killed in February 2022 in Aragua, in an area controlled by “El Conejo”.

Venezuela shares with Honduras the highest crime rate in Latin America, with almost 11,000 victims between 2021 and 2022, according to the Observatory on Violence (OVV), an NGO that compiles data on cases in the country.