Alex Saab appears in Miami charged with money laundering tied to bribery in Chavismo’s food programs
Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello declared that Saab’s Venezuelan identity documents are fraudulent and that his nationality was never valid, despite defending him during years
Colombian-Venezuelan businessman Alex Saab, regarded for years as the main financial frontman of former president Nicolás Maduro, appeared on Monday before a federal court in Miami, where he was formally charged with one count of money laundering linked to a bribery scheme used to enrich himself through contracts of Venezuela’s state food import program. The hearing took place two days after acting President Delcy Rodríguez handed him over to the United States in what the Venezuelan government described as a deportation but which, in legal terms, amounts to an extradition.
Saab appeared handcuffed and in prison uniform before federal Judge Marty Fulgueira Elfenbein of the Southern District of Florida, and replied in English yes, ma’am after the charge was read. The indictment document, later released by the Department of Justice, accuses him of conspiring with others to bribe Venezuelan public officials in order to obtain ”lucrative contracts from the Local Supply and Production Committees (CLAP) for the importation of food into Venezuela, between 2015 and 2019. The text details the alleged fraudulent misrepresentation of the nature and origin of the supplies and refers to the falsification of documents on imports purportedly arriving from Colombia and Mexico.
The indictment further states that Saab and his collaborators used their direct access and corrupt influence” over Venezuelan government officials to gain access to billions of dollars in oil owned by Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), sold under false pretexts. The funds obtained from those sales were allegedly transferred to and through US bank accounts to further the scheme. This is the second time Saab faces the US judicial system: during his first detention, in Cape Verde in 2020 and his subsequent extradition in 2021, he secretly cooperated with the DEA and the FBI, as revealed during the proceedings by the Miami Herald.
The handover is part of the deep reconfiguration of the Chavista apparatus that the Rodríguez administration has driven since Maduro’s capture on 3 January. Parallel to the Miami hearing, Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello declared that the businessman’s Venezuelan identity documents are fraudulent and that his nationality was never valid before the Administrative Service for Identification, Migration, and Foreign Nationals, providing the internal legal cover for the operation.
Saab, born in Barranquilla 54 years ago, had been received in Caracas with honors in December 2023 following a prisoner swap that returned to the United States ten citizens detained in Venezuela and the former naval officer known as Fat Leonard, alongside the release of 21 Venezuelan political prisoners. He was incorporated into the cabinet as Minister of Industry and National Production between October 2024 and January 2026, when Rodríguez removed him upon taking office as acting president. His detention in February under unclear circumstances and his subsequent handover to the United States symbolically close one of the most representative chapters of Chavismo’s financial network.