Venezuelan regime of Nicolas Maduro has launched a campaign to save Alex Saab, his Alleged financier, from extradition to the USA. Maduro fears that investigation of Saab’s case may expose his connections with drug cartels; and Iranian Hezbollah will provide more evidence on money laundering and human rights violations in Venezuela. According to this campaign Alex Saab claims he was tortured by the authorities in Cape Verde and that even worse punishments await him in case of being extradited to the United States. Saab describes his detention as an ‘abduction’ and as an ‘exceptionally serious diplomatic conflict’. Unsurprisingly, he denies the US’ accusations too. Venezuelan authorities claimed that Saab had been on layover in Cabo Verde as a part of a trip to provide food, medicine ‘and other goods of a humanitarian nature to attend’ to the coronavirus pandemic. They stated that his arrest was unlawful and was taken as an act of aggression by the United States. This fact proves how significant Alex Saab is for Maduro regime.
According to data from financial analysis Ecoanalítica in 2018 illegally earned money summed to 32% of the Venezuelan government’s income (about $14.4 billion). While there are no analogue data for 2019 and 2020, the Maduro government’s finances have been hit hard by sanctions and a dramatic drop in oil prices, forcing it to depend even more on illicit streams, especially gold.
Saab was instrumental in negotiating deals with other countries in the face of choking sanctions.
Alex Saab, 49, the Colombian businessman who is allegedly a ‘financier’ and ‘front man’ of embattled Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
Saab was detained on June 12, 2020 when he was flying from Venezuela to Iran. His jet stopped in the Cape Verdean island of Sal to refuel and authorities there arrested him on the spot. The United States Department of Justice is seeking his extradition to American soil. However, Cape Verde stop lies on the traditional Latin America-Europe drug-trafficking route. With the multiplication of drug routes between the two continents through West Africa, this archipelago is increasingly becoming an ideal transit and storage point for cocaine trafficking.
Saab has played a key role in establishing and maintaining the illicit financial networks that facilitate corruption, and Maduro reportedly entrusted him with his personal wealth. Saab’s appearance in the U.S. court will enable the U.S. authorities to receive detailed information about the illicit activities feeding the Maduro regime. It could help understand the regime’s criminal networks and sanction more effectively.
Saab is behind a vast corruption network involving government subsidized food boxes that has allowed Maduro and his allies to steal hundreds of millions of dollars from the Venezuelan people, while also using food as a form of social control.
This food program known as CLAP by its Spanish initials is run by the Venezuelan military through a network of companies owned or controlled by Alex Saab. Saab and others purchased poor quality food in bulk from countries such as Mexico, Colombia, and Turkey and sold them to the Venezuelan government at inflated prices.
Saab is a key figure in the pillaging of the national reserves, profiting off the suffering of the people and increasingly criminalizing and providing those international networks for the Maduro regime. Between 2004 and 2014, an estimated $11 billion in funds went missing from PDVSA, according to a 2016 investigation by the Venezuelan National Assembly.
As Colombian El Tiempo informs, US intelligence operatives had been tracking Saab’s flights to Venezuela, Germany, Russia, Italy and Iran. Those visits could be covered by CLAP program, i.e illegal gold and drugs activities.
Saab replicated this scheme in other industries, including oil and gold. He helped the regime export gold of dubious origin to Iran, and other countries. Venezuelan illegally mined gold was used as payment in terrorist organizations activity.
Saab himself was indicted this month in Colombia on laundering and fraud charges. Prosecutors say he is also being investigated for money laundering for Colombian drug cartels. Two of Maduro’s closest confidants — Tarreck El Aissami and Diosdado Cabello — have been implicated in a massive drug trafficking operation known as the Cartel of the Suns (Cartel de los Soles). That cartel involves at least 123 current and former senior regime officials who have held different positions in the executive branch, armed forces, municipal governments, judicial and legislative branches. So, Saab could be involved in money-laundering activity of the Sun cartel close to Maduro regime.Thus, the Maduro regime and cartel representative are likely to press Praia either to postpone the extradition or get off.
