Supreme Court confirms Alex Saab’s extradition to the United States

On March 17, the Cape Verdean justice ordered the extradition of the Colombian businessman Alex Saab, who is accused of money laundering in the federal courts of the United States. This last decision will allow the defense to appeal the ruling, and delay the extradition for a maximum of two months. Baltasar Garzón, a former Spanish judge, leads the Saab defense team, which faces charges of money laundering and being the front man of Nicolás Maduro, awarding him a wide criminal network of drug trafficking and the fraudulent obtaining of official millionaire contracts.

The Colombian was arrested in Cape Verde on June 20, 2020, his arrest was coordinated between Interpol and the information managed by American intelligence. Maduro’s 49-year-old alleged front man was heading to Iran in his private plane from Caracas, Venezuela, and was detained in Cape Verde when the plane landed to refuel. Interpol had previously announced its arrest warrant, since in 2019 the US Department of Justice publicly presented the official charges against Saab, where it highlighted the accusation of money laundering for 350 million dollars, which were obtained through of exchange control in Venezuela.

Saab’s defense judges all the accusations as unfair, because at the time of his arrest in Cape Verde, according to them, an irregularity was committed, since Saab was traveling with a diplomatic passport and was on a supposed special mission with final destination Iran. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Venezuela, through a press release, reported that Saab had diplomatic immunity, and that it wasn status of “special envoy” of the Venezuelan diplomatic corps. According to the Foreign Ministry, Saab elaborated “different procedures for the Government”.

The former attorney general of the Republic of Venezuela, Luisa Ortega Diaz, who is in Colombia as a political refugee, due to the persecutions of the Chavista regime against her, affirms that Saab operated as a front man for Maduro and operated under the contracts of the Local Supply and Production Committees (CLAP), which is a system of distribution of basic meals to the popular or poorest sectors of the country, and which has resulted in one of the great corruption scandals within Chavismo. Saab is one of the most fundamental pieces within the regime’s illicit financing organization chart, according to the former prosecutor, he would be in charge of moving Maduro’s illicit financial system, through organized crime. Saab would also be involved in the construction contracts of the social mission “Great Housing Mission”, one of the largest monetary scams in the country.

Ortega Díaz asserted that the money stolen by Chavismo is almost uncountable, and that many of the people who have generated the most benefits from Saab’s services are the Maduro family and the children and nephews of the first lady Cilia Flores, who supposedly do business. direct illicit activities such as the Colombian businessman, linked to tourism and hospitality projects in the Dominican Republic. The former prosecutor also made reference to the alleged integration of Saab to the diplomatic corps “it is not true that he is diplomatic. Where is the gazette that accredits it? Where is the gazette where you are granted naturalization? They are inventions that they wielded at the last minute to take him away. Ortega Díaz considers that the capture of Saab is a great step to know the different sources of financing of the scheme, the routes of illicit traffic, lines of connections and how the business of illegal sale of gasoline, gold and coltan operates.

With this second appeal presented by the defense of Saab, which at the same time is the last possible resort to delay the extradition of the Colombian, if it is not effective, Saab will be escorted and transferred to the main airport of Cape Verde, Amílcar Cabral on the island. de Sal, where he will be placed in the custody of the Drug Control Administration (DEA), who will be in command of the direct flight to the United States. President Joe Biden received the news through the State Department, before Cape Verde’s appeal was introduced, and then later he was notified by the Department of Justice, to begin to move all the legal mechanisms for his transfer. , “The State Department (of the United States) has already been notified and now the Department of Justice will proceed,” according to a federal government source told the Colombian newspaper Time.