Álex Saab Morán rejected the offer from the United States Government to help his family escape from Venezuela. This was one of the three reasons given by the Florida judge to declassify the document on the cooperation of the Colombian businessman, considered the figurehead of President Nicolás Maduro, with the US anti-drug agency DEA.
In his decision, taken on February 16 after a hearing between the parties, the magistrate pointed out that Saab had not been able to indicate any effort made by his family to leave Venezuela and that “it has even refused to accept a proposal from the United States Government to help them leave Venezuela.”
For this reason, the judge decided that the public interest in knowing the content of the document was above the alleged threats against the life of Saab or his family. His second wife, former model Camila Fabri, about 28 years old, and his two daughters live in Caracas. Fabri led the demonstrations in support of her husband when he was extradited from Cape Verde to the United States in October 2021, and she has always assured that she does not feel kidnapped in Venezuela.
Fabri and the Venezuelan government reacted in the same line to the revelations about Saab’s cooperation with the DEA between 2018 and 2019. The president of the National Assembly, Jorge Rodríguez, dismissed the veracity of the document.
In a public intervention, uploaded to YouTube by the Venezuelan portal El Pitazo, he responded in this regard: Now they take this from Álex Saab, if so, why did they take out two teeth by savagely beating him there in Cape Verde? Why was he unspeakably tortured? (…) Why do they subject him to constant mechanisms of psychological terrorism? Why was he tortured over and over again in Cape Verde? It’s kind of weird isn’t it?
Precisely last January, Rodríguez conditioned the dialogue that takes place in Mexico between his government and the opposition with the release of Saab in order for him to join the dialogue tables, the Venezuelan newspaper The National. The second condition was the delivery of the regime’s assets blocked abroad.
On the same day as the hearing held in Miami, the United States, the European Union and several countries urged the Maduro government to “urgently” resume talks in Mexicoas reported from Washington.
In turn, one of the legal offices that defends Saab issued a statement on Wednesday assuring that his meetings with the agents of the public force or the United States Department of Justice were “to confirm that neither he nor the companies associated with him had done anything wrong” and what was done “with the full knowledge and support” of Venezuela.
He revealed that the disclosure of the document at the request of the Department of Justice “is nothing more than an attempt to harm the interests” of Venezuela and “weaken the solidity of the relationship between Saab and Venezuela.” Lawyer David Rivkin concluded by indicating that his client “remains a loyal and diplomatic citizen (…) and will never do anything that harms the interests of the country.”
Hours earlier, in Miami, at Wednesday’s hearing, the lawyer for Saab’s other defense cabinet, Neil Schuster, begged the judge not to make the document public for fear of serious retaliation: “Please do not declassify (…) I think this will create a situation where your family will be incarcerated, hurt, physically hurt.”
The document with the revelations about the cooperation with the DEA has number 26 in the process, which already accumulates 93 records, and had been presented by the US Attorney’s Office on February 23, 2021. In total, 15 documents are still kept confidential . Only the judge will decide when they can be revealed.
The State Department had presented it to reinforce its position that Saab Morán was a fugitive from US justice when his extradition proceedings were being carried out. According to prosecutors, despite being warned that he would be charged, as in fact happened in July 2019, the Colombian businessman had not appeared in the United States to face the process. Saab’s defense opposed, and continues to appeal, that he be considered a fugitive. All this happened when the case was being carried out to extradite him from Cape Verde.
In the account of the document in question, it was indicated that Saab’s first meeting with DEA agents occurred in August 2016 in Bogotá and was related to the construction contracts for popular housing for Venezuela.
In these businesses, as was known in 2013, the Global Construction Fund (Foglocons) participated, which was the company subcontracted by the Venezuelan firms that received the millionaire contracts from the government of then President Hugo Chávez Frías. To fulfill the work, the Colombian Foglocons opened branches in Ecuador and Peru.
Between 2012 and 2013, Foglocons Ecuador had exported almost $160 million to Venezuela. Payments came through Sucre Monetary Compensation System, because the Venezuelan government controlled the departure of bolivars from their country. However, for Ecuadorian customs, sales were only $3 million. The Ecuadorian Prosecutor’s Office investigated the case on suspicion of money laundering. Later part of the process was annulled and in 2016 the accused were declared innocent.
A second run-in with DEA agents was in 2017 and a third in June 2018, and shortly thereafter Saab sent for mail a draft agreement in which he claimed that he had paid bribes to Venezuelan officials in contracts related to the purchase of food.
The cooperation, according to the prosecutors, was very “active” with various communications through calls, texts and voice messages. Saab even transferred $12.6 million in four wires between August 2018 and February 2019 to an account controlled by the DEA. He assured the Americans that this money was the profits he had made together with his partner Álvaro Pulido Vargas. The United States Attorney’s Office filed another accusation against Pulido Vargas (also a partner of the Ecuadorian Foglocons).
The last meeting was in April 2019 and the deadline to deliver was given on May 30 of that year, otherwise it could no longer continue in the cooperation program. However, Saab ignored the warnings.
On July 25, 2019, he was formally charged by the State Department in Florida with money laundering and seven other charges. American justice ensures that he laundered more than $350 million through his financial system. He has pleaded not guilty. Venezuela has insisted that he is a diplomat for its government.
The judge set the trial hearing for October 11. Since the end of last year, the process of exchanging evidence has already begun. The Prosecutor’s Office made its first delivery on November 29, with more than 470 documents on a DVD, to Saab’s defense. At that time, he indicated in his brief that he could present more evidence related to malicious acts, such as the payment of bribes to access the Venezuelan currency control system and contracts for medicine and food.
In Ecuador, the Prosecutor’s Office opened an investigation into alleged irregularities in the compensation system Sucre and former president Rafael Correa was notified about it. (I)
Source: Eluniverso
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