Álex Saab, called to appear in court on the morning of November 1

United States prosecutors must inform Álex Naín Saab Morán on any evidence that may favor him or that could cast doubt on the evidence against him, with a view to guaranteeing a proper defense. This was ordered by Judge Robert Scola last Monday after the appearance of Saab, extradited from Cape Verde last Sunday.

Colombian Saab Morán, considered the presumed name of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, must appear by videoconference next Monday, November 1 at 10 am before Scola and will have the help of an interpreter. The businessman is accused of laundering money and monetary instruments (checks, promissory notes, titles or securities) together with Álvaro Pulido Vargas, also known as Germán Rubio Salas, who is a partner of Saab, according to prosecutors.

The notorious case includes a request for the confiscation of assets and properties for at least $ 362 million against Saab and Pulido. The first is defended by seven lawyers from the Baker & Hosteller law firm. In turn, the United States will be represented by an equal number of officials from the Department of Justice, equivalent to the Ecuadorian Prosecutor’s Office.

In the public file of the case, accessed by this newspaper, there is only one accusation, which was presented July 25, 2019 and that it has not been updated with more detailed information on the route of the money, the participation of other people or companies in the alleged money laundering scheme. There are eight documents that are not public, two of them presented on July 25, 2019 and another six in early 2021.

According to the initial document, prosecutors accused three Colombian citizens who spent a lot of time in Miami and who would have helped in the money laundering scheme and bribery of Venezuelan public officials from the customs services (Seniat), the National Foreign Exchange Administration Commission (Cadivi) and the Bolivarian National Guard. Recordings are even mentioned about the payment of bribes in 2014. However, the identity of these people is not known.

The bribes were to obtain, according to prosecutors, “undue advantages, including the approval of false and fraudulent documents related to the importation of construction products and materials, and to access the government’s foreign exchange system controlled by Cadivi, to ensure payments in United States dollars based on false and fraudulent invoices and documents related to goods that were never imported into Venezuela ”.

Cadivi was in charge of delivering dollars or other currencies to companies and citizens who needed to import products or travel abroad. That price was well below the parallel market, which was supposedly prohibited. Over time, the black market dollars were worth hundreds of times more than those awarded by Cadivi.

The start in Ecuador

Prosecutors cited a 2011 home construction contract in the indictment. It is a business that started in November of that year. At that time, the presidents of Colombia, Juan Manuel Santos, and Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, signed several agreements in a ceremony, and one of them was for popular housing. In the video of the ceremony, Álex Saab is seen solemnly signing an agreement on behalf of the Colombian Global Construction Fund. It was part of the Great Housing Mission promoted by Chávez, who by then already suffered from an aggressive cancer that would take him to the grave in March 2013.

According to the information on the case that was investigated for money laundering in Ecuador and that was published in this newspaper in April 2015, it was six months later, in March 2012, when The Venezuelan Government signed with the companies Elm Import and Thermo Group CA the contract for the houses for more than $ 654 million. Both already existed some years ago, and in the case of Thermo Group it was dedicated to “activities related to beauty products” and in October 2010 it added “others related to construction materials and products for prefabricated houses” in its registry.

The Ministry of Housing certified that in Venezuela there were not enough or adequate materials for the prefabricated, so the two companies had to import them. They did so through Fondo Global de Construcción (Foglocons SA), created in September 2012 in Guayaquil. Their Shareholders were the Colombian Pulido and the Venezuelan Luis Eduardo Sánchez Yánez, supposed brother of Jaime Francisco Sánchez, advisor to the then president Rafael Correa and who worked in the Government until 2015, in the Secretariat of Communication. However, in the process, the defense of Fogoclons assured that it would be a namesake.

Companies with similar names had also been created in Venezuela and Peru, as well as Fondo Global Petrolero and Grupo FDGC Latinoamericana, in Spain.

By March 2013, Fogoclons Ecuador, which had warehouses in Durán and an office in the Galerías Shopping Center, had invoiced almost $ 160 million for exports of prefabricated buildings, according to the Central Bank of Ecuador (BCE). The money came from the Venezuelan ELM Import, its only client. While, according to Ecuadorian customs, the value of what was sold to Venezuela it was just $ 3 million. Therefore, the Prosecutor’s Office considered that there were unjustified transactions that had used the Sucre compensation system.

The Sucre was a compensation system for imports and exports between countries of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), which was made up of Venezuela, Ecuador, Cuba, Bolivia, Nicaragua. Trade operations were cleared through central banks.

In the Report of Unjustified Operations that appears in the Ecuadorian process against Foglocons it is mentioned that this company transferred $ 21 million to the Peruvian company with the same name; while to the Panamanian CFIS SA it sent $ 23 million and to TY CM Advisor Ltd., domiciled in the British Virgin Islands, $ 575,000. Other money was spent on local suppliers.

When the 2015 report was published, in collaboration with Connectas, Armando.Info and The Miami Herald of Miami, multi-family houses had not been built. Only one machinery was parked on the land and the neighbors had not even found out that one of the programs of the Great Housing Mission was being projected there. Chávez had already died and Nicolás Maduro was the new president of Venezuela.

The Ecuadorian judges dismissed the tax accusation of money laundering. In 2016, the final dismissal was issued for the directors of Foglocons: Luis Zúñiga Burneo, Álvaro Pulido Vargas, Amir Nassar Tayupe and Luis Sánchez Yánez. By then there was a fund for $ 53 million in the Central Bank for operations that some banks had rejected Foglocons for lack of sustenance. With the definitive dismissal, the money left the ECB, it was distributed among several people and institutions, according to an investigation by the portal Investigation journalism, in July 2019.

Money counted in the US

In the accusation against Saab and Pulido in Miami, it is detailed that, between March 2012 and December 2014, both and their accomplices They would have moved $ 350 million from Venezuelan banks to the United States and then to other accounts abroad controlled by them.

It is not clear what is included in that $ 350 million. According to the portal Armando.Info, Saab and Pulido signed contracts for the construction of sports works and for the importation of food for the CLAP program, and they had oil investments, among other businesses. Four journalists from that portal were prosecuted by Saab in 2017 for defamation for reporting on the CLAPs and for having mentioned their closeness to Nicolás Maduro. Now they live in Bogotá. Last week, the Venezuelan prosecutor’s office published an investigation against one of them, Roberto Deniz, for incitement to hatred and raided his parents’ home in Caracas.

The US prosecutors in the case against Saab and Pulido add to the $ 350 million several bank transactions from Panama to Florida, ranging from October 2014 to May 2015, and totaling $ 420,000. Additionally, they have requested the confiscation of assets and properties equivalent to $ 350 million, as well as another $ 12.6 million of money seized between August 2018 and February 2019. In total, $ 362.6 million.

According to the journalist Gerardo Reyes, author of the book Álex Saab, the truth about the businessman who became a billionaire in the shadow of Nicolás Maduro, US prosecutors estimate that the Colombian’s fortune exceeds one billion dollars.

The maximum penalty for the crimes in the case in Miami amounts to 40 years in prison for each of the accused.. At the hearing on Monday, November 1, in Miami, more details of this notorious case between Maduro and the United States will begin to be known. (I)