Miami prosecutors dismiss most money-laundering charges against Saab
In a surprising move, federal prosecutors in Miami have agreed to dismiss almost all of the lengthy indictment against Alex Saab, a businessman close to Venezuela’s president who is accused of laundering $350 million in Venezuelan government funds, including wire transfers into South Florida’s banking system. It was done as part of a secret deal made with the Republic of Cape
Verde to gain his extradition to the United States, according to court papers filed Monday.
Saab, however, still faces up to 20 years in prison on the lone remaining moneylaundering charge involving a scheme prosecutors say ripped off money from a Venezuelan housing program that was supposed to benefit the poor in the economically depressed country.
The other seven moneylaundering counts in Saab’s indictment, each also carrying up to 20 years in prison, were dismissed by U.S. District Judge Robert Scola as part of the deal with Cape Verde, an island nation off the west coast of Africa where Saab had been arrested more than a year ago.
Federal prosecutors said in a court filing that Cape Verde authorities agreed to extradite Saab last month only if they could be assured that he would serve no more than 20 years in prison for his money-laundering offense — the maximum allowed under that country’s similar laws.
“On September 7, 2020, during the extradition process, the United States sent an assurance through diplomatic channels to the Republic of Cabo Verde that the United States will not prosecute or punish defendant Alex Nain Saab Moran for more than a single count of the indictment, in order to comply with Cabo Verdean law regarding the maximum term of imprisonment,” federal prosecutors Kurt Lunkenheimer and Alexander Kramer wrote in the motion to dismiss seven of the eight money-laundering charges in the indictment.
Saab, a Colombian businessman close to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, pleaded not guilty Monday to the sole moneylaundering conspiracy charge accusing him of siphoning $350 million from the Venezuelan government by bribing officials to secure building supply contracts for lowincome housing.
Saab, 49, was recently ordered detained by a federal magistrate judge but he can seek his release at a later date. Federal prosecutors told Magistrate Judge John J. O’Sullivan that they will ask that he be detained before his moneylaundering trial because they consider him a flight risk.
Prosecutors noted that Saab fought his extradition from Cape Verde to Miami, where he was brought in mid-October, for more than 400 days.
Saab was carrying a Venezuelan passport when he was arrested last year in Cape Verde en route to
Iran on what he called a humanitarian and medical mission. He claimed to be a Venezuelan diplomat who was immune from prosecution as he fought his extradition before the Cape Verde court, but to no avail.
While being held in Cape Verde, he also tried to get his money-laundering indictment dismissed in Miami, claiming immunity.
After losing, he appealed in a matter that is still pending before the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta.
Now in custody at the Federal Detention Center in Miami, Saab is the latest suspect to be charged in connection with a series of corruption and money-laundering cases filed in the United States that accuse dozens of current and former Venezuelan officials, business people and lawyers of stealing billions of dollars from Venezuela’s government and its state-run oil company, PDVSA.
Saab was charged along with Colombian national Alvaro Pulido Vargas, 55, a fugitive who still faces the original eight-count money-laundering indictment in Miami federal court.
The pair are accused of paying off Venezuelan government officials to obtain contracts to supply building materials for low-income housing projects between November 2011 and September 2015, according to the indictment filed in 2019.
Saab and Pulido paid bribes “to obtain improper business advantages” from Venezuelan government officials, the indictment said. In turn, the two men were paid in U.S. dollars from the Venezuelan government’s foreigncurrency exchange system “based on false and fraudulent invoices and documents for goods that were never imported into Venezuela,” the indictment said.
Saab and Pulido are accused of conspiring with others to launder the proceeds of the illegal bribery scheme from Venezuelan bank accounts into the U.S. financial system, including South Florida, where co-conspirators held meetings to carry out the illicit plot, federal prosecutors said. Prosecutors are seeking to confiscate $350 million of Saab’s assets, and have already seized about $12 million from his U.S. bank accounts.