The rise and fall of Alex Saab, financial shark of the Bolivarian Revolution

Detained in Venezuela amid confusing circumstances, Alex Saab (Barranquilla, 54 years old) is being faced with the possibility of extradition to the United States, where he was previously imprisoned on charges of money laundering. The new administration of Delcy Rodríguez in Caracas, under the watch of Donald Trump, has not made any demands that the ponytailed Colombian businessman be set free, as Nicolás Maduro did when he managed to repatriate his alleged frontman when Saab was imprisoned in Miami. On the contrary, there is every sign that the current regime is in favor of Saab’s detention. His current situation is bizarre: once extradited from Cape Verde, he was set free in a prisoner exchange between Caracas and Washington, named Minister of Industries and National Production, then relieved of his duties by the interim president herself soon after the operation during which U.S. military forces captured Maduro at the beginning of the year. Saab’s luck appears to have run out.

Under the shadow of Maduro, he not only became wealthy, but a kind of “super minister” in the Bolivarian Republic, with greater responsibilities than any other member of the cabinet, says journalist Gerardo Reyes, who is the director of the investigative unit of the Univisión Network. For years, Reyes’ team has investigated the man who was labeled the financial operator of Hugo Chávez’s successor. When there was no milk in Venezuela, Saab was called in. When there was no gas, he was summoned to fix things. And faced with a shortage of foreign currency, officials suggested he find a way to sell off gold bullion. He duly took his plane, or hired another plane, and flew off to unload gold in Turkey. He was the man who could solve anything, according to Reyes, author of the Spanish-language book Alex Saab: La verdad (Alex Saab: The truth; Planeta Publishing, 2021).

“Alex Saab’s friends have no explanation for how such an average guy, of modest aspiration and lacking any kind of passion, aside for the love of his children, became the financial shark of the Bolivarian Revolution,” writes Reyes of the origins of a man who became beset by debt — and yet, within a few years’ time, would return to his native Baranquilla in a private jet. In Caracas, Saab became practically an aide to former Colombian senator Piedad Córdoba, who was instrumental in the release of politicians kidnapped by the FARC, and who had privileged access to Chávez. It was she who opened the doors of the Miraflores Palace, the presidential residence, to Saab. The other Colombian figure key to understanding Saab’s rise is lawyer Abelardo de la Espriella, now a far-right presidential candidate. Reyes describes De la Espriella as Saab’s “friend, advisor and guide.” “The cunning, ponytail-wearing businessman swam through the stormy waters of Venezuelan corruption and the useless U.S. embargo until he reached an irreversible point where the survival of the Venezuelan state depended on his furtive improvisations,” Reyes writes.

The first mention of Saab having a business in Venezuela dates back to November 2011, when he signed a contract to build pre-fabricated housing at Miraflores Palace with Chávez himself, already bald at the time due to the chemotherapy he was undergoing, as well as then-Chancellor Maduro and Juan Manuel Santos, president of Colombia. At the time of that signing ceremony, which would later go viral, Saab was an unknown — so much so that Santos would recount how Colombian chancellor María Ángela Holguín whispered in his ear, “Who is that guy?” At the time, the businessman was expanding the projects he had begun in his hometown Baranquilla, as part of a family of textile entrepreneurs from Lebanon.

Starting with early ventures like manufacturing key chains and advertising materials for graduations, Saab would become a jack-of-all-trades entrepreneur. Over the years, he began to make inroads into the Chávez government, and later, Maduro’s. In Venezuela, he initially connected with the government through the construction business, importing food for CLAPs (Local Supply and Production Committees), medicine and whatever else was needed, then trading gold for food with Turkey and transporting oil in ghost ships, until he became Chavismo’s principal, if shadowy, financial operator. The Venezuelan government saw him as an ingenious man motivated by challenge, who found quick and efficient ways to circumvent U.S. sanctions. Washington estimates that the dividends Saab obtained from the deals he made under Maduro amount to more than $1 billion.

The U.S. Department of the Treasury is convinced that Saab was Maduro’s most important frontman. He was thus dubbed by Luisa Ortega Díaz, Venezuela’s attorney general beginning in 2007 under Chávez until 2017 under Maduro, who fled to Colombia on a boat after receiving death threats in August 2017. At the time, De la Espriella announced that he had suggested suing Ortega for defamation. “Saab is not part of the Venezuelan government, he is a government contract worker who has carried out all his work as a gentleman,” he told Barranquilla’s El Heraldo newspaper. Saab was presented as being tied to housing construction, and as having no relationship with the food industry. However, Armando Info had previously revealed that he was behind the Hong Kong company that managed CLAP boxes that had been discovered to contain expired products.

Saab’s power became evident when Armando Info’s investigative journalists were exiled shortly thereafter. In the same year of 2017, he filed a legal complaint against the publication’s editors for defamation, and managed to get telecommunications regulators to block its website. The publication had exposed the shy businessman’s entry into the inner workings of the Chavista government. “Although he came to Venezuela before Maduro was president, the grotesque power and multi-million businesses in which he participated were thanks to the rise of Maduro in April 2013,” says Armando Info journalist Roberto Deniz. “Saab is an extremely important piece in the legal puzzle” of the United States against Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores, Deniz says.

The businessman’s June 2020 detention in Cape Verde, an archipelago near the coast of Africa, was what brought him to the attention of the public. He was designated a diplomat, given Venezuelan citizenship, and became the subject of a fierce legal battle. The #FreeAlexSaab Foundation was created, and streets in the country filled with posters calling for his liberation. This was how many were able to put a face to the man who had busied himself in bringing low-quality milk and food to the country through the CLAP program, created in 2015 by Maduro. Venezuelans were introduced to his timid, nearly monotone voice at the end of 2023, when he returned to Venezuela after a stint in a Miami prison upon receiving a pardon from Joe Biden and becoming part of a prisoner exchange between the two countries. “I feel proud to have served the Venezuelan people and this humane and loyal government,” Saab said from Miraflores, where he landed after a flight on which he was accompanied by Jorge Rodríguez, president of Venezuela’s National Assembly and brother of the current interim president. The appearance was followed by Saab’s official appointment to the cabinet.

Saab had been detained when the private plane on which he had been traveling made a stop in Cape Verde to refuel on a trip to Caracas from Tehran. He had been sent to coordinate the support offered by Iranian authorities during the gas crisis that affected Venezuela that year during the Covid-19 pandemic. At the time, Saab was accused, among other crimes, of money laundering. He had been pegged, not only by the United Sates but by other nations, including Colombia, as one of the main frontmen for various corrupt networks within the Venezuelan government.

Despite using all his legal options to avoid extradition, including being appointed as a diplomat after his capture, in 2021, Saab was brought before a Miami court to face trial. He had served less than two years in detention when, at the end of 2023, he was included in the prisoner exchange negotiated by Maduro as part of the so-called Barbados Agreement. That accord also included a broad lifting of oil sanctions, a move Trump often criticizes, with his characteristic sarcasm.

Saab’s return was preceded by an intense campaign in which he was portrayed as the victim of kidnapping and which was led by his wife, Italian model Camilla Fabri. She soon took public office herself, coordinating the Return to the Homeland Plan aimed at getting the Venezuelan diaspora to return to their country. Additional corruption linked to the sale of crude oil was exposed by the arrest of Maduro’s second-in-command, Oil Minister Tareck El Aissami, who was arrested with Saab’s closest associate, fellow Colombian Alvaro Pulido (alias Germán Rubio Salas), who were both sanctioned by the United States and tied to money laundering and drug trafficking. In one of the books written to call for Saab’s release, alleged letters written by Saab during his detention refer to El Aissami and then-vice president Delcy Rodríguez as the Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi of the Venezuelan economy.

Upon his return, Saab officially became part of Maduro’s cabinet, first as the head of imports and exports, his longtime purview, and then through the Ministry of Industries and National Production. When he was removed on January 17, Rodríguez said he would be entrusted with new, unspecified responsibilities. The story of Maduro’s frontman appears to heading towards its conclusion, but at this point, it’s impossible to be sure. As Reyes says, “Saab is a professional castaway. When everyone thinks he’s drowned, he turns up somewhere, muddling through.”

With information from Eyanir Chinea.

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