MIAMI: During a period of severe suffering in the South American nation, a close associate of deposed Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was accused on Monday of bribing high-ranking officials to steal hundreds of millions of dollars from lucrative contracts to import food.
After being deported over the weekend by acting President Delcy Rodríguez as part of a crackdown of insider businessmen suspected of enriching themselves through shady relationships with Maduro, Alex Saab made his first court appearance.
When a federal judge in Miami asked Saab if he understood the charges against him—a single count of money laundering connected to a ten-year conspiracy to fabricate companies, falsify shipping records, and skim from government contracts to import food from Colombia and Mexico—he responded, shackled and dressed in a beige prison uniform, “Yes, ma’am” in English.
In a five-page indictment released on Monday, prosecutors claimed that Saab and others increased their corrupt influence deep within the Maduro administration, gaining access to billions of dollars in oil sales from the state-run oil giant PDVSA as US sanctions severely hampered Venezuela’s international trade.
Saab, 54, was arrested during a refuel break in Cape Verde while on what the Venezuelan government characterized as a high-level humanitarian mission to Iran. He was already indicted during the first Trump administration in 2019.
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