By Luc Cohen and Alexandra Ulmer
NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden has decided to grant clemency to Alex Saab, an ally of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, as part of a deal in which Maduro’s government released Venezuelans linked to the political opposition and 10 detained Americans.
Here are some details of the U.S. criminal case against Saab, a 51-year-old Colombian businessman.
WHEN WAS SAAB ARRESTED?
Saab was arrested in Cape Verde in June 2020 pursuant to a U.S. indictment after his plane stopped to refuel. Venezuela’s government said at the time Saab had been designated a diplomat to negotiate shipments of fuel and humanitarian aid from Iran.
He was extradited to the United States in October 2021 and held in federal jail in Miami while awaiting trial.
WHAT ARE THE CHARGES AGAINST HIM?
Federal prosecutors in Miami charged Saab with siphoning around $350 million out of Venezuela through the United States as part of a bribery scheme linked to Venezuela’s state-controlled exchange rate.
Saab and an associate were accused of bribing Venezuelan government officials to secure payment in U.S. dollars at a favorable rate, and laundering money through a scheme involving building low-income housing in Venezuela.
WHAT DOES HIS DEFENSE SAY?
Saab pleaded not guilty to the charges. His U.S. defense attorneys have called the corruption charges a “cryptically alleged scheme” and said their client denied the allegations.
In a statement on Wednesday, Saab’s lawyer Joseph Schuster said the prisoner swap agreement “allows an innocent Venezuelan diplomat to return home after serving over three and a half years in custody.”
WHAT IS THE STATUS OF THE CASE?
A trial had initially been scheduled for October 2022, but was delayed as Saab appealed U.S. District Judge Robert Scola’s denial of his bid to dismiss the charges on grounds of diplomatic immunity.
The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had not yet ruled on Saab’s appeal at the time the prisoner swap deal was announced.
WHY IS SAAB A SIGNIFICANT FIGURE?
Venezuela’s opposition once held out hopes that Saab would provide information to the U.S. government that could help disrupt Maduro’s efforts to evade economic sanctions imposed by Washington. The United States accuses Maduro of violating human rights and rigging his 2018 re-election, which Caracas denies.
U.S. Court filings showed that Saab agreed to be an “active law enforcement source” for the Drug Enforcement Administration before his arrest, though one of his lawyers said he only met with U.S. law enforcement officials to explain that his companies had done nothing wrong.
(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York and Alexandra Ulmer in San Francisco; Editing by Rosalba O’Brien)
