Maduro ally Alex Saab pleads guilty in federal money laundering case

MIAMI (AP) — A close ally of ousted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro pleaded guilty Tuesday to a single count of money laundering tied to an alleged bribery conspiracy to win lucrative government contracts in the South American country.

As part of the plea deal, Alex Saab agreed to cooperate in continuing federal investigations and forfeit $195 million in criminal proceeds from the corruption scheme.

Saab, 54, was deported in May by Venezuela’s acting President Delcy Rodriguez to the U.S., which has been targeting the Colombian-born businessman for more than a decade.

The money laundering offense carries a maximum 20-year penalty but prosecutors agreed to recommend a sentence at the low end of the recommended range and seek additional reductions should his cooperation, including against four unnamed co-defendants, prove valuable.

Saab was previously charged during the first Trump administration in 2019 and then arrested during a refueling stop in Cape Verde on what the Venezuelan government described as a high-level humanitarian mission to Iran.

Saab, in court Tuesday, told Judge Kathleen Williams that he takes the antidepressant Zoloft and other medicines daily for what he described as “post-traumatic stress disorder” following his 2020 arrest.

President Joe Biden pardoned Saab in 2023 in exchange for the release of several imprisoned Americans in Venezuela. The deal, part of a failed effort by the Biden White House to lure Maduro into holding a free presidential election, was harshly criticized by Republicans and federal law enforcement officials, who immediately began investigating Saab for other alleged crimes not covered by the narrowly tailored pardon.

U.S. officials have long described Saab as Maduro’s “bag man” and could ask him to serve as a character witness against the former president, who is awaiting trial on drug charges in Manhattan after being captured in a raid by the U.S. military in January.

The new U.S. prosecution of Saab and Maduro is taking place as the Trump administration overhauls relations with Venezuela, focusing its attention on tapping into Venezuela’s vast oil reserves . This month, Trump announced a partnership with Venezuelan oil entrepreneur Alejandro Betancourt in which the U.S. government will gain a stake and access to at-cost crude shipments from oil fields with a potential to produce 65 billion barrels.

Saab was little known even in Venezuela until after his first arrest, in 2020, when Maduro’s government invested huge resources rallying public support for his release.

Rodríguez, then serving as Maduro’s vice president, helped mount an international campaign in which she referred to Saab as an “innocent Venezuelan diplomat” who had been illegally “kidnapped” by the U.S.

But following Maduro’s capture, Rodríguez distanced herself from Saab, firing him from her Cabinet and stripping him of his role as the main conduit for foreign companies looking to invest in Venezuela.

Saab amassed a fortune through Venezuelan government contracts but became even more valuable to Maduro as U.S. sanctions forced Venezuela to conduct much of its oil sales and foreign trade outside of Western financial institutions.

The new indictment accuses Saab and others of setting up a web of companies to bribe top Venezuelan officials controlling contracts for the so-called CLAP program set up by Maduro to provide staples — rice, corn flour, cooking oil — to poor Venezuelans at a time of rampant hyperinflation and a crumbling currency.

As part of the alleged conspiracy, Saab helped create fake companies, falsify shipping records and skim from government contracts to import food from Colombia and Mexico. The conspirators also accessed billions of dollars in oil sales from state-run oil company PDVSA, according to the criminal complaint.