The United States alleges that between 2011 and 2015 it used its financial system to launder the illicit profits obtained, transferring $ 350 million.
The Ecuadorian Prosecutor’s Office investigates the business of the Colombian businessman Alex Saab, presumed figurehead of Nicolás Maduro, in which the former Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa (2007-2017) would be involved, Assemblyman Fernando Villavicencio reported on Sunday.
The accusing body “has opened a preliminary investigation by the crime of embezzlement and other related crimes, mainly linking Rafael Correa and senior authorities of his government, “the left-wing parliamentarian told AFP.
Villavicencio, a journalist opposed to Correa and in whose government he was considered a politically persecuted person, provided a copy of the notification from the Prosecutor’s Office addressed to the National Assembly. The document indicates the beginning of the investigation “for the alleged crime of embezzlement”, processing a recommendation from the legislative commission of Inspection, headed by the same deputy.
According to that commission, Saab took advantage of the Unique Regional Compensation System (Sucre), a virtual currency adopted in 2009 by countries of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (Alba) in substitution of the dollar.
The Alba is currently made up of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua. Ecuador left the bloc in 2018 and Bolivia a year later.
With its Colombian company Fondo Global de Construcciones, with a subsidiary in Ecuador, Saab “negotiated the export of prefabricated houses to Venezuela for $ 350 million”, In an operation similar to the one previously carried out from Colombia, all during the government of the late Hugo Chávez, Villavicencio explained.
Caracas paid in bolivars and the Saab subsidiary in Ecuador received dollars through the Ecuadorian Central Bank through the Sucre system.
The Public Prosecutor’s Office notifies Rafael Correa of the initiation of a preliminary investigation into an embezzlement related to the Sucre and Álex Saab compensation system
“From Colombia not a single door was exported and Ecuador has a deficit in this type of houses, “said Villavicencio and said that” it was about illegal operations, fictitious and overrated”.
The legislator considers that Correa is part of the irregularities by being “the direct author of this mechanism”, Alluding to Sucre.
The former socialist ruler settled in Belgium shortly after completing his term in May 2017, and in Ecuador the justice sentenced him along with several of his former collaborators to eight years in prison, for receiving bribes in exchange for contracts with various companies.
Álex Saab faces a confiscation request for at least $ 362 million in the United States
Saab was arrested in June 2020 during a stopover in Cape Verde and extradited last October for requirement of the American justice, which considers him as an alleged figurehead for Maduro.
It alleges that between 2011 and 2015 it used the US financial system to launder the illicit profits obtained, transferring 350 million dollars from Venezuela, through accounts in the United States and other countries.
Already extradited, Saab has pleaded not guilty. Currently waiting su trial in Miami. (I)
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