Venezuelan-American relations recorded a major turning point last week, after the administrations of President Biden and his counterpart Maduro reached an agreement to exchange prisoners from both sides, after Qatari mediation efforts.
Although the deal included the extradition of 32 prisoners to Venezuela, including twelve US citizens, President Biden complied with President Maduro’s request, which represented the extradition of one prisoner, of heavy political importance, namely Alex Saab, the veteran figure whom the American administration says is a ring. Communication between governments; Iran, Turkey, Hezbollah, and the Venezuelan regime.
Who is difficult for President Maduro? Why did he represent a valuable catch for the United States when Interpol arrested him in 2020 and brought him to a prison in Florida in 2021?
Maduro interface
Aside from the US administration considering Alex Saab a “face” for President Maduro in his foreign missions in the East, the US judiciary’s accusations against Saab are based on the narrative of money laundering cases, in which the latter used some American banks to transfer and move money derived from profits made through corruption deals inside Venezuela. With a total value of $350 million.
For these operations, Saab employed a network of names allied with the Venezuelan regime in the United States, according to the American narrative. The prison sentence was likely to reach 20 years, which made the demand for deportation to Venezuela difficult, and according to the US administration, it was classified as “one of the maximum demands.”
The method of stopping him in Cape Verde, in West Africa, was considered an “achievement” that the administration of former President Trump boasted of, and achieved political revenge against President Maduro, which warmed the hearts of Republicans and the Venezuelan opposition.
But the step taken by current President Biden failed many politicians within the United States and in Venezuela, despite the fact that a deal to release Saab was concluded in exchange for the release of more than thirty people who were languishing in Venezuelan prisons, among Venezuelan opponents and those holding American citizenship.
Suspension details
The details of Alex Saab’s arrest date back to June 2020, when the private plane he was on, coming from Iran, stopped in the Cape Verde archipelago to refuel, and he found members of Interpol waiting for him. They arrested him. Under the pretext that a search card was issued against him by the American judiciary, he was detained there awaiting the deportation decision.
Meanwhile, Saab’s defense team submitted a residency card and a diplomatic card in his name from the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry, showing that he was accredited as its ambassador to the African Union, and that he enjoys full immunity, according to which Saab is prevented from being searched and the contents of the plane are confiscated.
But the president of Cape Verde at the time, the right-winger José María Neves, did not show cooperation with the Venezuelan side. Just days before the end of his presidency, in October 2021, he enabled President Biden’s government to deport Saab to Florida.
It is interesting that Alex Saab represents all this political weight in Venezuela and the United States, and the fact is that he is not Venezuelan, neither by birth, nor by upbringing, nor by nationality, but his favor with the Venezuelan regime goes back to the era of the late leader Chavez, and actually began in 2011, and developed under the rule of the current president. Maduro, to the point of calling him his right-hand man abroad.
Alex Saab played the role of President Maduro’s representative in his foreign missions, since the restrictions imposed on him by the US administration in 2019. In addition to the worsening social conditions inside Venezuela; Due to the escalating international economic sanctions since 2015, and their reinforcement by the diplomatic rupture in 2018.
At a time when the American administration and those loyal to it see that the tasks that President Maduro assigned to Saab are tainted with major suspicions of financial corruption, the leftist governments see that Alex Saab is merely a pioneering businessman who enjoys the trust and support of the Venezuelan regime, and that everything the American administration says It deals with the war against President Maduro and the symbols of the Chavez movement.
Controversial tasks
Another part of the political class – relatively neutral – believes that Saab performs controversial missions abroad on behalf of President Maduro, but he actually benefits, and on his own account, from the sanctions imposed on Venezuela, through trading in the food subsidy sector and in materials for subsidized housing projects. And making exaggerated profits, with a green light from the Venezuelan government, as if he embodies those who are described as “those whose conditions flourished when their countries starved!”
Alex Saab’s first activity was to single out the task of supplying the late leader Chavez’s public housing project with building materials from Colombia and Ecuador between 2012 and 2013, for which he received $159 million, but he delivered goods whose value did not exceed $3 million, according to the Armando Info website. “Investigative, affiliated with the opposition. On the other hand, Saab and his Colombian partner, Alvaro Pulido, also won a contract in 2016, authorizing him to supply the Venezuelan government with the country’s food needs, at the height of the food blockade on Venezuela, during which the government decided to adopt the method of monthly cardboard boxes for citizens.
Saab was responsible for importing basic foodstuffs, in line with a list provided by the government to foreign companies, most of which were located in Iran, Russia, and Turkey. The opposition stated that President Maduro’s government was adopting a barter method in these transactions, granting its partners abroad contracts to explore for oil and minerals in exchange for food commodities.
She added that all financial transactions between them take place in fake companies in Panama, Colombia, Mexico, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, and Hong Kong, but Saab, for example, changed the headquarters of his companies to Turkey in 2019, with the American judiciary opening investigations into him, according to the website. Armando Info’s investigative dissident. But the biggest claim to fame – which accompanied Saab’s name in the opposition, but which was never attached to him – was smuggling money and gold, to President Maduro’s allies abroad.
Why did you agree to negotiate?
It is certain that the administration of President Biden and the government of Venezuelan President Maduro agreed to negotiate and accept this deal, under duress and submission to interests imposed by the de facto situation on both sides.
President Maduro needs more than ever to ease international sanctions on his country, as he heads into a new election year, and he alone knows that the American condition on him, to allow a margin of freedom for the opposition in the next stage, is up to him, given his confidence in the capabilities of his regime’s iron fist.
As for Washington, it urgently needs to reduce oil prices, even if the price is to compensate for Russian oil with the return of the flow of Venezuelan oil on the global market.
