Miami — A close ally of the deposed Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro A man was charged in federal court in Miami on Monday with bribing top officials to take advantage of lucrative government contracts.
Alex is hard He appeared in court for the first time after being deported over the weekend by acting President Delcy Rodriguez as part of a purge of insider businessmen believed to have enriched themselves through corrupt dealings with Maduro.
Saab, shackled and wearing a prison uniform, answered “Yes, ma’am” in English after being told he was charged with one count of money laundering linked to an unspecified bribery scheme. It was disclosed at the hearing but has not yet been made public.
Saab, 54, was previously charged during the first Trump administration in 2019 and then arrested during a refueling stop in Cape Verde in what the Venezuelan government described as a high-level humanitarian mission to Iran.
But President Joe Biden pardoned him in 2023 in exchange for the release of many Americans imprisoned in Venezuela and the return of… A fugitive foreign defense contractor. The deal, part of a failed effort by the Biden White House to entice Maduro into holding a free presidential election, has been harshly criticized by Republicans and federal law enforcement officials, who have begun investigating Saab for other alleged crimes not covered by the narrowly tailored pardon.
US officials have long described Saab as Maduro’s “bag man” and could ask him to serve as a valuable character witness against his former protector, who is awaiting trial on drug charges in Manhattan after being captured in a US military raid in January.
The new American trial of Saab is taking place against the backdrop of the Trump administration’s efforts to mend relations with Venezuela.
Trump and senior administration officials praised Rodriguez, who opened the Venezuelan oil industry to American investment at a time of rising oil prices linked to the war in Iran. In contrast, the White House reduced talk of elections, which the Venezuelan constitution requires within 30 days of the president becoming “permanently unavailable.”
But Rodriguez faces enormous internal pressure from the most extreme ideological wing of the ruling Socialist Party, some of whom, like Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello, have great influence within Venezuela’s security forces and are themselves facing criminal charges in the United States.
Mario Silva, who for years spread pro-government propaganda as host of a program on state television before being removed from the airwaves shortly after Maduro’s arrest, questioned the legality of Saab’s dismissal, saying it violated the constitutional ban on extradition.
“The imperialists do not negotiate. They win, test and investigate – until our country is destroyed,” Silva said in a live broadcast posted Sunday on social media. “No one is safe now.”
Silva also noted that the efforts made by the Venezuelan government to secure a previously difficult release outweigh the work done to bring back Maduro and former First Lady Celia Flores.
Perhaps anticipating the backlash, the Venezuelan immigration authority in a statement on Saturday referred to Saab only as “a Colombian national involved in the commission of numerous crimes in the United States of America, a fact that is widely known, notorious and heavily documented in the media.”
Rodriguez’s silence contrasts with the praise heaped on Saab a few years ago during the international campaign launched by the Venezuelan government to release him from US custody. At the time, Rodriguez described him as an “innocent Venezuelan diplomat” who was illegally “kidnapped” while on a humanitarian mission to Iran to circumvent the US’s “immoral imperial blockade.”
While Rodriguez consolidated her rule, she distanced herself from Saab, Expel him from her government Stripping it of its role as a major conduit for foreign companies looking to invest in Venezuela.
Saab made a fortune through Venezuelan government contracts. His 2019 indictment was related to a government contract for low-income housing that was never built.
The Associated Press reported earlier this year that he was being investigated as part of another case brought by the Justice Department against Saab’s longtime associate, Alvaro Pulido, over… The so-called CLAP program Maduro created it to provide basic foodstuffs — rice, cornmeal and cooking oil — to poor Venezuelans at a time of rampant hyperinflation and a currency collapse.
Saab was identified in the 2021 indictment as “Co-Conspirator 1” and allegedly helped create a network of companies used to bribe a pro-Maduro governor who awarded business partners a contract to import boxes of food from Mexico at an inflated price.
difficult He secretly met with the DEA Before his first arrest, in a closed court session in 2022, his lawyers revealed that the businessman had for years helped the DEA expose corruption in Maduro’s inner circle. As part of this collaboration, he lost more than $12 million in illegal proceeds from dirty business dealings.
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Staff writer Regina Garcia Cano in Mexico City contributed to this report.
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This story is part of an investigation including the FRONTLINE documentary “The Crisis in Venezuela,” which aired February 10, 2026, on PBS. Watch the documentary on pbs.org/frontlinein BBS application And on Frontline YouTube channel.