Miami (AFP) – Venezuela’s former minister of industry pleaded not guilty Friday to charges of money laundering and other financial crimes in a US court, amid accusations he served as front man for deposed president Nicolas Maduro. Attorneys for Alex Saab, a 54-year-old Colombia-born businessman and close Maduro ally, entered the plea on his behalf, they told AFP.
Saab was not present for the proceedings in a US federal court in Miami, where he was indicted in May on charges he ran a network that exploited a subsidized food aid program for Venezuela known as CLAP. “Alex Saab allegedly used American banks to launder hundreds of millions of dollars stolen from a Venezuelan food program meant for the poor and proceeds from the illegal sale of Venezuelan oil,” US Assistant Attorney General A. Tysen Duva said at that time.
Saab — who was extradited from Venezuela in May — had originally become involved with politics in the South American country during the final years of leftist firebrand Hugo Chavez’s 1999-2013 presidency. Under Maduro, he allegedly acted as a front man and money launderer, and in return was granted Venezuelan citizenship and a diplomatic passport.
First hit by US sanctions in 2019, Saab was arrested in Cape Verde in 2020 and extradited to the United States the following year. He was released in 2023 as part of a negotiated prisoner exchange with Venezuela. Maduro appointed Saab to be his minister of industry in 2024. Shortly after US forces seized Maduro in a deadly Caracas raid, interim president Delcy Rodriguez dismissed Saab from all his posts.
A federal court in New York ruled Wednesday that Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores will go on trial in the United States in June 2027, after US forces captured them in a January 3 nighttime raid. The former leader, 63, and wife have been held in a Brooklyn jail for more than seven months after pleading not guilty to federal drug trafficking and firearms charges.
© 2024 AFP
