Venezuela says it deported close ally of Maduro to face judicial proceedings in U.S.

FILE - Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro, left, and Alex Saab stand together during an event marking the anniversary of the 1958 coup that overthrew dictator Marcos Perez Jimenez, in Caracas, Venezuela, Jan. 23, 2024.

MIAMI — Venezuela’s government said Saturday it deported a close ally of Nicolas Maduro facing several criminal investigations in the U.S. less than three years after the businessman was pardoned by President Joe Biden as part of a prisoner swap.

The decision marks a stark reversal for Alex Saab, who Maduro fought tooth and nail to bring home after his previous international arrest in 2020. Now, the Colombian-born insider, long described by U.S. officials as Maduro’s “bag man,” may be asked to testify against his former protector, who is awaiting trial on drug charges in Manhattan after being captured in a shock raid by the U.S. military in January.

The Venezuelan immigration authority in a short statement Saturday did not explicitly say where it had sent Saab but said the decision was made based on several ongoing criminal investigations in the U.S.

The statement’s reference to Saab only as a “Colombian citizen” appeared to be a nod to Venezuelan law, which prohibits the extradition of its nationals.

Following his last arrest, Venezuela’s government submitted a copy of what it said was Saab’s Venezuelan passport to a U.S. court, with then Vice President Delcy Rodriguez -- now acting President -- claiming he was an “innocent Venezuelan diplomat” who had been illegally “kidnapped” while on a humanitarian mission to Iran to circumvent the “immoral, imperial blockade” imposed by the United States.

A fortune built from government contracts

Saab, 54, amassed a fortune through Venezuelan government contracts. But he fell out of favor with the country’s new leadership that took power following Maduro’s ouster. Since taking over from Maduro on Jan. 3, Rodriguez demoted Saab, firing him from her Cabinet and stripping him of his role as the main conduit for foreign companies looking to invest in Venezuela. For months conflicting news accounts have circulated that he was imprisoned or under house arrest.

His removal to the United States is likely to deepen divisions inside Rodriguez’s fragile ruling coalition of Chavistas, named for the movement started by the late Hugo Chavez.

Rodriguez has generated enormous goodwill in Washington and successfully stalled any talk of new elections as she bends to the Trump administration’s demands to open up its oil and mining industries to American investment.

But those concessions to what Chavistas have long decried as the U.S. “Empire” have angered many of her more radical, ideologically driven allies, some of whom, like Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello, wield great influence inside the Venezuelan security forces and face criminal charges themselves in the U.S.

U.S. investigation into food corruption

The Associated Press reported in February that federal prosecutors have been digging for months into Saab’s role in an alleged bribery conspiracy involving Venezuelan government contracts to import food.

The investigation stems from a 2021 case the Justice Department brought against Saab’s longtime partner, Alvaro Pulido, a former law enforcement official said. That prosecution, out of Miami, centers around the so-called CLAP program set up by Maduro to provide staples -- rice, corn flour, cooking oil -- to poor Venezuelans struggling to feed themselves at a time of rampant hyperinflation and a crumbling currency.

Saab is identified in the indictment as “Co-Conspirator 1” and allegedly helped set up a web of companies used to bribe a pro-Maduro governor who awarded the business partners a contract to import food boxes from Mexico at an inflated price.

Saab was first arrested in 2020 after his private jet made a refueling stop in Cape Verde en route to Iran on what the Venezuelan government described as a humanitarian mission to circumvent U.S. sanctions.

Rodriguez celebrated Saab’s return in 2023 as a “resounding victory” for Venezuela over what she called a U.S.-led campaign of lies and threats. But several Republicans criticized the deal, including Sen. Chuck Grassley, of Iowa, who wrote a letter to then-Attorney General Merrick Garland saying history “should remember (Saab) as a predator of vulnerable people.”

Over the objections of law enforcement, Biden in 2023 agreed to free Saab in exchange for the release of several imprisoned Americans and Venezuela’s return of a fugitive foreign defense contractor known as “Fat Leonard.” The deal came as part of an effort by the Biden White House to roll back sanctions and lure Maduro into holding a free and fair presidential election.

Biden’s pardon of Saab was narrowly tailored to a 2019 indictment -- the case number is cited in the pardon itself -- related to a contract he and Pulido allegedly won through bribes to build low-income housing units in Venezuela that were never built.

A possible witness against Maduro

Should Saab be returned to U.S. custody, he could become a valuable witness against Maduro.

The businessman secretly met with the Drug Enforcement Administration before his first arrest and, in a closed-door court hearing in 2022, his lawyers revealed that the businessman, for years, helped the DEA untangle corruption in Maduro’s inner circle. As part of that cooperation, he forfeited more than $12 million in illegal proceeds from dirty business dealings.

Saab’s Miami-based attorney, Neil Schuster, declined to comment. The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.