Another one bites the dust. Or should I say, second time’s a charm?
The FBI reportedly arrested Nicolás Maduro’s bagman, Alex Saab, around 2:00 to 2:30 a.m. on Wednesday morning.
Saab, a Colombian-Venezuelan businessman, is pretty well known as Maduro’s primary money launderer, front man, and financial fixer, as well as one of Maduro’s closest confidants.
He also served as the regime’s “Minister of Industry and National Production” for a while, from October 2024 — shortly after Joe Biden freed him from a federal prison — to January of this year, when Delcy Rodríguez fired him from his role in the current “government” that she is running on behalf of Donald Trump and Marco Rubio.
Yes, you heard that correctly. He was already in a federal detention center in Miami once before, but Biden (or the Biden administration, let’s face it) set him free.
I’ve written about this before, but just to recap, in 2020, Saab was arrested in Cape Verde when his plane stopped to refuel en route to Iran. In 2021, he was extradited to the United States and was held in Miami on fraud and money laundering charges.
But between 2022 and 2023, Biden made several deals with Maduro, including releasing his narco-nephews, who were also in federal prison, easing numerous sanctions, and allowing Saab to walk free as long as he promised to be a good boy. In exchange, Maduro handed over some United States hostages and promised free and fair 2024 elections, which we all know never materialized. Biden got suckered.
Related: Biden’s Venezuelan Disaster
You can add this to the list of wins we’ve achieved so far in Venezuela that I wrote about here: Happy One-Month-Without-Maduro Anniversary! It’s also a major blow to the regime’s corruption apparatus and its relationships with adversaries, like Iran.
It’s believed that Delcy and her brother, Jorge Rodríguez, who serves as the regime’s “President of the National Assembly of Venezuela,” cooperated with the FBI to make this happen and that Saab will be extradited to the United States in the day ahead.
In addition to Saab, Raul Gorrin, a Venezuelan businessman also identified as a frontman for Maduro, was reportedly arrested. According to Colombia One, he’s the “owner of the channel Globovision, and sanctioned by OFAC for allegedly having paid bribes of up to US$159 million to Venezuelan officials.”
It should be noted that Colombian media confirmed and broke the story of the arrests, while state-aligned journalists in Venezuela have denied it. No one from the United States has issued a statement.
If you’re interested, here’s some more on Saab’s background:
Saab went from being a textile sector businessman in Barranquilla on the verge of bankruptcy to one of the bastions of the Venezuelan regime under the presidency of Nicolas Maduro.
This shift, according to experts on his personal and political trajectory, occurred because he then received help from the now-deceased Colombian politician Piedad Cordoba, who was always very close to the Venezuelan government, especially due to her mediating role with Colombian guerrilla groups.
Born in Colombia in 1971, Alex Saab partnered — according to U.S. Department of Justice documents — with various Venezuelan public entities, primarily in projects aimed at building social housing and providing subsidized food through the CLAP program (Local Committees for Supply and Production).
The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the U.S. Department of the Treasury determined that Saab and his network established multi-million dollar contracts with the Venezuelan government for the sale of products, often at inflated prices.
These operations included the use of shell companies and financial movements across several jurisdictions, according to official reports published in 2019 and 2021 by the U.S. agency.
Consequently, Saab faced asset freezes in the U.S. due to judicial proceedings, and an Interpol red notice was issued for his capture, as he was accused of channeling more than US$350 million of funds related to Venezuelan public contracts to overseas accounts.
Saab has always denied any charges against him, and Maduro accused the United States of holding him as a political prisoner. He was treated to a hero’s welcome upon his return to Venezuela, and, as I mentioned, eventually given a role in the regime’s “government.”
No new U.S. indictment has been announced, nor have U.S. officials confirmed the arrest.
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