For now, seven of the eight charges against him for money laundering have been dismissed.
Colombian-Venezuelan Alex Saab, who a few weeks ago was extradited from Cape Verde to the United States, will be processed on November 15 in a Miami court.
Saab, 49, has been on trial since October 18, two days after he arrived in that city from the African archipelago.
The charge on which he will be tried is conspiracy to launder money, which is punishable by up to 20 years in prison. This, after last Monday Judge Robert Scola, of the Southern District of Florida, agreed with the Prosecutor’s Office to stop indicting seven charges of money laundering and only keeps the first one mentioned against him. This due to an agreement to obtain his extradition, according to AFP.
According to the exiled Venezuelan journalist Roberto Deniz, who has denounced Saab in his writings, part of the agreement with Cape Verde was to dismiss cases in order not to exceed the maximum penalty of that African country in the United States.
In addition, the Venezuelan opposition accuses him of being a front man for President Nicolás Maduro, whose government was enraged by the extradition and suspended negotiations with the opposition in Mexico, even accusing Washington of kidnapping Saab, to whom it gave him Venezuelan nationality and a title of ambassador, and for whom he fought unsuccessfully to avoid his transfer to the North American country, recalls EFE.
According to the United States authorities, Saab and its partner, the Colombian fugitive Álvaro Pulido, transferred 350 million dollars obtained illegally in Venezuela to launder them through the United States.
Prosecutors from the North American country assure that both profited illegally and created a network of bribes, taking advantage of a contract signed with the Venezuelan government in November 2011 to build houses for low-income people.
The dismissal of charges this week only affects Saab and not Pulido, the Prosecutor’s Office indicated in its brief.
Last Monday afternoon, Saab submitted to the court a waiver to attend his hearing in person or by videoconference, taking advantage of his right.
The Barranquilla-born businessman is also suspected of laundering money obtained illegally through a food subsidy system in Venezuela.
Although this crime does not appear in the indictment, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the United States Department of the Treasury sanctioned him for that reason in July 2019, more than a year before his capture in Cape Verde. .
While the Venezuelan exile in the US trusts that Saab will collaborate with the US justice system and thus expose Maduro, official spokesmen from Caracas and the businessman’s wife insist that he is not going to “bend.”
The government of Democrat Joe Biden has upheld the decision made during the presidency of Donald Trump to ignore Maduro as president and has corroborated the recognition of the opposition Juan Guaidó as interim president.
Nor has it modified the filing of charges for narco-terrorism against the Venezuelan president made in 2020 or the offer of fifteen million dollars for any information that leads to his capture. (I)
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