A close ally of ousted Venezuelan President\u00a0Nicol\u00e1s Maduro\u00a0is expected to plead guilty Tuesday in a federal case that accused him of bribing officials to win lucrative contracts to import food at a time of widespread hardship in the South American country.<\/p>\n
Alex Saab is scheduled to appear before Judge Kathleen Williams in Miami on Tuesday for a change of plea hearing, according to court records. The details of the plea were not immediately made public and Saab\u2019s attorney, Neil Schuster, declined to comment.<\/p>\n
Saab was deported in May by Venezuela’s acting President Delcy Rodriguez in response to pressure from the United States, which has been targeting the Colombian-born businessman for more than a decade. He was charged with a single count of money laundering tied to an alleged conspiracy to create fake companies, falsify shipping records and skim from government contracts to import food from Colombia and Mexico.<\/p>\n
Saab, 54, was previously charged during the first Trump administration in 2019 and then arrested during a refueling stop in Cape Verde on what the Venezuelan government described as a high-level humanitarian mission to Iran.<\/p>\n
But President Joe Biden pardoned him in 2023 in exchange for the release of several\u00a0imprisoned Americans\u00a0in Venezuela. The deal, part of a failed effort by the Biden White House to lure Maduro into holding a free presidential election, was harshly criticized by Republicans and federal law enforcement officials, who immediately began investigating Saab for other alleged crimes not covered by the narrowly tailored pardon.<\/p>\n
U.S. officials have long described Saab as Maduro\u2019s \u201cbag man\u201d and could ask him to serve as a character witness against the former president, who is awaiting trial on drug charges in Manhattan after being captured in a raid by the U.S. military in January.<\/p>\n
The new U.S. prosecution of Saab and Maduro is taking place as the Trump administration overhauls relations with Venezuela, focusing its attention\u00a0on tapping into Venezuela’s vast oil reserves. This month, Trump announced what he called the \u201cBIGGEST OIL DEAL IN WORLD HISTORY\u201d in Venezuela, a partnership with Venezuelan oil entrepreneur Alejandro Betancourt in which the U.S. government will gain a stake and access to at-cost crude shipments from oil fields with a potential to produce 65 billion barrels.<\/p>\n
Saab was little known even in Venezuela until after his first arrest, in 2020, when Maduro’s government invested huge resources rallying public support for his release.<\/p>\n
Rodr\u00edguez, then serving as Maduro’s vice president, helped mount an international campaign in which she referred to Saab as an \u201cinnocent Venezuelan diplomat\u201d who had been illegally \u201ckidnapped\u201d by the U.S.<\/p>\n
But following Maduro’s capture, Rodr\u00edguez distanced herself from Saab,\u00a0firing him from her Cabinet\u00a0and stripping him of his role as the main conduit for foreign companies looking to invest in Venezuela.<\/p>\n
Saab amassed a fortune through Venezuelan government contracts but became even more valuable to Maduro as U.S. sanctions forced Venezuela to conduct much of its oil sales and foreign trade outside of Western financial institutions.<\/p>\n
The new indictment accuses Saab and others of setting up a web of companies to bribe top Venezuelan officials controlling contracts for the\u00a0so-called CLAP program\u00a0set up by Maduro to provide staples \u2014 rice, corn flour, cooking oil \u2014 to poor Venezuelans at a time of rampant hyperinflation and a crumbling currency.<\/p>\n
As part of the alleged conspiracy, Saab and others allegedly expanded their corrupt influence deep inside the Maduro government, accessing billions of dollars in oil sales from state-run oil company PDVSA, prosecutors allege.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
Durkin Richer reported from Washington.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A close ally of ousted Venezuelan President\u00a0Nicol\u00e1s Maduro\u00a0is expected to plead guilty Tuesday in a federal case that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":399690,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[225,227,226,123],"class_list":["post-399689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-hialeah","tag-hialeah","tag-hialeah-headlines","tag-hialeah-news","tag-miami"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=399689"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399689\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/399690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=399689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=399689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=399689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}