Venezuela says it deported a close ally of Maduro to face criminal proceedings in US

Venezuela’s gov­ern­ment said Sat­ur­day it de­port­ed a close al­ly of Nicolás Maduro fac­ing sev­er­al crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tions in the U.S. less than three years af­ter the busi­ness­man was par­doned by Pres­i­dent Joe Biden as part of a pris­on­er swap.

The de­ci­sion marks a stark re­ver­sal for Alex Saab, who Maduro fought tooth and nail to bring home af­ter his pre­vi­ous in­ter­na­tion­al ar­rest in 2020. Now, the Colom­bian-born in­sid­er, long de­scribed by U.S. of­fi­cials as Maduro’s “bag man,” may be asked to tes­ti­fy against his for­mer pro­tec­tor, who is await­ing tri­al on drug charges in Man­hat­tan af­ter be­ing cap­tured in a shock raid by the U.S. mil­i­tary in Jan­u­ary.

The Venezue­lan im­mi­gra­tion au­thor­i­ty in a short state­ment Sat­ur­day did not ex­plic­it­ly say where it had sent Saab but said the de­ci­sion was made based on sev­er­al on­go­ing crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tions in the U.S. The state­ment’s ref­er­ence to Saab on­ly as a “Colom­bian cit­i­zen” ap­peared to be a nod to Venezue­lan law, which pro­hibits the ex­tra­di­tion of its na­tion­als. Fol­low­ing his last ar­rest, Venezuela’s gov­ern­ment sub­mit­ted a copy of what it said was Saab’s Venezue­lan pass­port to a U.S. court, with then Vice Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­dríguez — now act­ing Pres­i­dent — claim­ing he was an “in­no­cent Venezue­lan diplo­mat” who had been il­le­gal­ly “kid­napped” while on a hu­man­i­tar­i­an mis­sion to Iran to cir­cum­vent the “im­moral, im­pe­r­i­al block­ade” im­posed by the Unit­ed States.

A for­tune built from gov­ern­ment con­tracts

Saab, 54, amassed a for­tune through Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment con­tracts. But he fell out of fa­vor with the coun­try’s new lead­er­ship that took pow­er fol­low­ing Maduro’s ouster. Since tak­ing over from Maduro on Jan. 3, Ro­dríguez de­mot­ed Saab, fir­ing him from her Cab­i­net and strip­ping him of his role as the main con­duit for for­eign com­pa­nies look­ing to in­vest in Venezuela. For months con­flict­ing news ac­counts have cir­cu­lat­ed that he was im­pris­oned or un­der house ar­rest.

His re­moval to the Unit­ed States is like­ly to deep­en di­vi­sions in­side Ro­dríguez’s frag­ile rul­ing coali­tion of Chav­is­tas, named for the move­ment start­ed by the late Hugo Chávez.

Ro­dríguez has gen­er­at­ed enor­mous good­will in Wash­ing­ton and suc­cess­ful­ly stalled any talk of new elec­tions as she bends to the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion’s de­mands to open up its oil and min­ing in­dus­tries to Amer­i­can in­vest­ment.

But those con­ces­sions to what Chav­is­tas have long de­cried as the U.S. “Em­pire” have an­gered many of her more rad­i­cal, ide­o­log­i­cal­ly dri­ven al­lies, some of whom, like In­te­ri­or Min­is­ter Dios­da­do Ca­bel­lo, wield great in­flu­ence in­side the Venezue­lan se­cu­ri­ty forces and face crim­i­nal charges them­selves in the U.S.

US in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to food cor­rup­tion

The As­so­ci­at­ed Press re­port­ed in Feb­ru­ary that fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors have been dig­ging for months in­to Saab’s role in an al­leged bribery con­spir­a­cy in­volv­ing Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment con­tracts to im­port food.

The in­ves­ti­ga­tion stems from a 2021 case the Jus­tice De­part­ment brought against Saab’s long­time part­ner, Al­varo Puli­do, a for­mer law en­force­ment of­fi­cial said. That pros­e­cu­tion, out of Mi­a­mi, cen­ters around the so-called CLAP pro­gram set up by Maduro to pro­vide sta­ples — rice, corn flour, cook­ing oil — to poor Venezue­lans strug­gling to feed them­selves at a time of ram­pant hy­per­in­fla­tion and a crum­bling cur­ren­cy.

Saab is iden­ti­fied in the in­dict­ment as “Co-Con­spir­a­tor 1″ and al­leged­ly helped set up a web of com­pa­nies used to bribe a pro-Maduro gov­er­nor who award­ed the busi­ness part­ners a con­tract to im­port food box­es from Mex­i­co at an in­flat­ed price.

Saab was first ar­rest­ed in 2020 af­ter his pri­vate jet made a re­fu­el­ing stop in Cape Verde en route to Iran on what the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment de­scribed as a hu­man­i­tar­i­an mis­sion to cir­cum­vent U.S. sanc­tions.

Ro­dríguez cel­e­brat­ed Saab’s re­turn in 2023 as a “re­sound­ing vic­to­ry” for Venezuela over what she called a U.S.-led cam­paign of lies and threats. But sev­er­al Re­pub­li­cans crit­i­cized the deal, in­clud­ing Sen. Chuck Grass­ley, of Iowa, who wrote a let­ter to then-At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Mer­rick Gar­land say­ing his­to­ry “should re­mem­ber (Saab) as a preda­tor of vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple.”

Over the ob­jec­tions of law en­force­ment, Biden in 2023 agreed to free Saab in ex­change for the re­lease of sev­er­al im­pris­oned Amer­i­cans and Venezuela’s re­turn of a fugi­tive for­eign de­fense con­trac­tor known as “Fat Leonard.” The deal came as part of an ef­fort by the Biden White House to roll back sanc­tions and lure Maduro in­to hold­ing a free and fair pres­i­den­tial elec­tion.

Biden’s par­don of Saab was nar­row­ly tai­lored to a 2019 in­dict­ment — the case num­ber is cit­ed in the par­don it­self — re­lat­ed to a con­tract he and Puli­do al­leged­ly won through bribes to build low-in­come hous­ing units in Venezuela that were nev­er built.

A pos­si­ble wit­ness against Maduro

Should Saab be re­turned to U.S. cus­tody, he could be­come a valu­able wit­ness against Maduro.

The busi­ness­man se­cret­ly met with the Drug En­force­ment Ad­min­is­tra­tion be­fore his first ar­rest and, in a closed-door court hear­ing in 2022, his lawyers re­vealed that the busi­ness­man, for years, helped the DEA un­tan­gle cor­rup­tion in Maduro’s in­ner cir­cle. As part of that co­op­er­a­tion, he for­feit­ed more than $12 mil­lion in il­le­gal pro­ceeds from dirty busi­ness deal­ings.

Saab’s Mi­a­mi-based at­tor­ney, Neil Schus­ter, de­clined to com­ment. The Jus­tice De­part­ment did not im­me­di­ate­ly re­spond to a re­quest for com­ment.