Court orders ally of Maduro sought by U.S. released
MIAMI — A regional court in West Africa has ordered the immediate release of a Venezuelan businessman close to President Nicolas Maduro, finding that his arrest in Cape Verde on U.S. money laundering charges was unlawful.
In its ruling Monday, a court belonging to the Economic Community of West African States, or ECOWAS, also instructed Cape Verde to cease all extradition proceedings against Alex Saab and compensate him $200,000 for damages
It’s not clear what, if any, impact the ruling by the three-judge panel will have on the extradition proceedings against Saab. Cape Verde, which arrested the Colombian-born businessman in June when his jet made a refueling stop on a flight to Iran, had previously repudiated the Nigeriabased court’s jurisdiction. And an appeals court in the island nation has already greenlighted his extradition, although the country’s highest court has yet to sign off.
But it comes as Saab’s U.S. attorneys were in a Miami federal court Monday arguing that their client is immune from prosecution as a result of the many diplomatic posts he has held for Maduro’s government since 2018.
U.S. officials believe Saab holds numerous secrets about how Maduro, his family and top aides allegedly siphoned off millions of dollars in government contracts amid widespread hunger in the oil-rich nation. At the time of his arrest, he was allegedly traveling to Tehran to negotiate deals to exchange Venezuelan gold for Iranian gasoline.
The ECOWAS court in its ruling largely rejected Saab’s claims that he enjoyed immunity from prosecution as a special envoy of Maduro’s government — the central argument of his U.S. attorney. It also noted that Saab wasn’t on the San Marino-registered jet’s passenger list when it stopped in Cape Verde, preferring to keep secret his mission shuttling between two countries heavily sanctioned by the U.S.
Saab’s New York-based lawyer, David Rivkin of Baker & Hostetler, argued Monday in federal court that the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations affords his client diplomatic immunity even while in transit.
Federal prosecutors in Miami indicted Saab in 2019 on money laundering charges connected to an alleged bribery scheme that siphoned more than $350 million from a low-income housing project for the Venezuelan government that was never built.
The Trump administration had made Saab’s extradition a top priority, at one point even sending a Navy warship to the African archipelago to keep an eye on the captive.