MIAMI
(AP) — Venezuela on Saturday demanded the release of a
government-connected businessman who was detained in Cape Verde on U.S.
corruption charges, calling his arrest an illegal act of aggression by
the Trump administration aimed at piling new hardships on the
crisis-wracked oil nation.
Alex Saab’s
arrest Friday while en route to Iran was a major blow to President
Nicolás Maduro’s government. U.S. officials believe he holds many
secrets about how the socialist leader, his family and top aides
allegedly siphoned off millions of dollars in government contracts amid
widespread hunger in the oil-rich nation.
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It was unclear
how American authorities, who had been targeting the Colombian
businessman for years, finally caught up with him. The Justice
Department declined to comment as did Saab’s American lawyer, Maria
Dominguez.
A person
familiar with the situation said the 48-year-old Saab was detained in
the Atlantic Ocean archipelago when his San Marino-registered jet made a
refueling stop on a flight to Tehran, where he was believed to be
negotiating deals to exchange Venezuelan gold for Iranian gasoline. The
person was not authorized to discuss the matter and spoke on condition
of anonymity.
Flight
tracking data shows the aircraft, which the once globe-trotting Saab had
used in the past, departed Friday from Venezuela’s capital, Caracas.
Adding to the
intrigue, a private jet belonging to Presidential Aviation, a U.S.
government contractor formerly owned by the Blackwater private security
firm, was standing ready for a chartered flight Sunday from Cape Verde
to Miami’s private Opa Locka airport.
Venezuela’s
government energetically protested the arrest of Saab, who it said was
traveling on a Venezuelan passport and was on a “humanitarian mission”
to buy food and medical supplies. In a statement issued Saturday night,
it said an Interpol arrest notice for Saab wasn’t issued until a day
after his detention, violating international norms and disregarding the
diplomatic immunity he enjoys as an “agent of a sovereign government.”
It said it
would initiate all legal and diplomatic actions to secure his release.
But coronavirus restrictions frustrated an attempt by Maduro’s nearest
ambassador, in Senegal, to travel to Cape Verde.
As the Trump
administration seeks to regain momentum in its faltering campaign to
oust Maduro and install opposition leader Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s
president, it is increasingly going after top officials and business
people connected to the embattled leader. In March, it indicted Maduro
and more than a dozen other individuals on narcoterrorist, corruption
and other criminal charges.
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Saab came onto the radar of U.S. authorities a few years ago after amassing a large number of contracts with Maduro’s government.
Federal
prosecutors in Miami indicted him and a business partner last year on
money laundering charges connected to an alleged bribery scheme that pocketed more than $350 million from a low-income housing project for the Venezuelan government that was never built.
Separately, Saab had been sanctioned
by the Trump administration for allegedly utilizing a network of shell
companies spanning the globe — in the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Hong
Kong, Panama, Colombia and Mexico — to hide huge profits from no-bid,
overvalued food contracts obtained through bribes and kickbacks.
“Saab engaged
with Maduro insiders to run a wide-scale corruption network they
callously used to exploit Venezuela’s starving population,” Treasury
Secretary Steven Mnuchin said at the time of the sanctions. “They use
food as a form of social control, to reward political supporters and
punish opponents, all the while pocketing hundreds of millions of
dollars through a number of fraudulent schemes.”
In private,
U.S. officials have long described Saab as a front man for Maduro
although he is not identified as such in court filings.
The U.S.
Treasury Department alleges some of Saab’s contracts were obtained by
paying bribes to the adult children of Venezuelan first lady Cilia
Flores, — Yoswal, Yosser and Walter Flores. Commonly known in Venezuela
as “Los Chamos,” slang for “the kids,” the three men are also under
investigation by prosecutors in Miami for allegedly forming part of a
scheme to siphon $1.2 billion from Venezuela’s state-owned oil company,
two people familiar with the U.S. investigation told The Associated
Press.
News of the
possible arrest broke late Friday but initially officials in the U.S.
and Saab’s native Colombia were skittish about discussing the matter.
Cape Verde has no extradition treaty with the U.S. and fresh on
officials’ minds is the 2014 saga involving another high priority
Venezuelan target, the late Hugo Chávez’s longtime spy chief, retired
Gen. Hugo Carvajal.
Carvajal was
arrested in 2014 on the Caribbean island of Aruba, where he had been
named Maduro’s consul, but managed to flee a U.S. drug warrant after
intense diplomatic pressure from Caracas. Carvajal remains at large
after having been jailed and later released in Spain.
Saab is
believed to have expanded his reach into Venezuela’s vital oil industry
as the OPEC nation’s economic crisis has deepened. Iran sent Venezuela
several tankers of gasoline last month that government opponents say
were purchased with gold and by shell companies controlled by Saab.
Last week,
prosecutors in Colombia froze eight properties allegedly belonging to
Saab, including a mansion in his Caribbean hometown of Barranquilla
valued at more than $7 million, as part of their own money laundering
investigation.
___
Associated Press writer Michael Balsamo in Washington contributed to this report.
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