Tensions rise as US moves against associates of Venezuela’s Maduro

The United States on Friday offered a Us$10-million reward for the arrest on money-laundering charges of an associate of a businessman whose extradition infuriated Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro.

Three Colombians and two Venezuelans are accused of bribing Venezuelan officials to win inflated contracts to provide products to the government-run food and medicine distribution programme, known as CLAP, from 2015 to 2020, the US Justice Department said in a statement on Friday.

Alvaro Pulido, who is Colombian, has been indicted alongside Saab on allegations they ran a network that exploited food aid destined for impoverished Venezuelans and moved US$350 million into foreign accounts.

The West African island nation of Cape Verde earlier this month extradited Saab to the United States, enraging Maduro who suspended dialogue with the US-backed opposition.

The US State Department said Friday it was offering US$10 million for information leading to the arrest or conviction of Pulido.

“Pulido and his co-conspirators allegedly marked-up the cost of producing the boxes of food in order to make a personal profit from their production,” an announcement said.

Pulido and four others were slapped with new charges over the scheme that were unveiled Thursday by a federal grand jury in Florida. If convicted, they could each face up to 100 years in prison, according to the Justice Department.

Maduro’s government first launched the food distribution programme in 2015 and it evolved into a widespread plan to feed the poor. It grew in importance and size during years of acute shortages, due to hyperinflation, plummeting local supply and government seizures of private companies.

SAAB IN COURT

Saab, who also has Venezuelan nationality and a Venezuelan diplomatic passport, appeared Monday at the US district court hearing in Miami held by videoconference, where Judge John J. O’sullivan said he was charged with eight counts of money-laundering.

The next hearing will take place on November 1.

He was first indicted in July 2019 in Miami for money-laundering, and was arrested during a plane stopover in Cape Verde off the coast of West Africa in June 2020.

Cape Verde agreed last month to extradite Saab to the United States, despite protests from Venezuela, which said he had been abducted by Washington.

Venezuela’s opposition has described Saab as a frontman doing shady dealings for the populist socialist regime of Maduro.

Colombia President Iván Duque said this week that he hopes Saab’s trial will shed light on Maduro’s “drug dictatorship.”

Duque has often accused Maduro’s regime of drug-trafficking to raise money, and of harbouring armed Colombian rebels on its soil.

Saab, however, has vowed not to collaborate with the US authorities.

“I will face my trial with total dignity,” Saab said in the letter shared by his family. “I want to be clear: I do not have to collaborate with the United States. I have committed no crime. I declare that I am in full possession of my means and I am not suicidal, in case I am murdered and then [they] say that I committed suicide.”

Maduro said last weekend in a televised address that Saab’s extradition on Saturday was “one of the most ignoble and vulgar injustices that has been committed in recent decades.”