Cape Verde Supreme Court rules Alex Saab to be extradited to the U.S.
On March 17, the African country's justice system approved the extradition of Alex Saab. This latest decision by the highest national court will allow the defence, led by former Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón, to appeal the ruling and delay the extradition process. The United States accuses the businessman of money laundering and of being Nicolás Maduro's front man in a vast criminal network of drug trafficking and fraudulent awarding of million-dollar government contracts.
The Colombian was arrested in Cape Verde on 20 June 2020, in a combined operation between Interpol and US intelligence. Saab, 49, was on his private plane and was detained when the aircraft landed for a technical stop for fuel. The plane was coming from Caracas, Venezuela, and was bound for Tehran, Iran. Prior to his arrest, the arrest warrant issued by Interpol was publicly known, as in 2019 the US Department of Justice filed the official charges, for which Saab is charged. The Justice Department concludes that Saab laundered 350 million dollars, obtained through exchange control in Venezuela.
Saab's defence considers the charges to be unfair, as the businessman was travelling on a diplomatic passport and was supposedly on his way to carry out a special humanitarian mission in Iran. The Venezuelan foreign ministry claims that Saab had diplomatic immunity, and that he had the label of "special envoy" from its diplomatic corps and acknowledges that he was working on various steps for the government.
In 2017, former Venezuelan prosecutor Luisa Ortega Díaz, currently persecuted by the regime and a refugee in Colombia, announced that Saab operated as a front man for the Local Supply and Production Committees (CLAP), a system of food distribution to the most vulnerable sectors of the country, including rice, chicken and oil. The companies in charge of importing these foodstuffs belonged to different businessmen, one of them being Alex Saab.
Saab represents a fundamental piece within the organisation chart of the regime's financial system, according to the former prosecutor, he would be in charge of meeting with the heads of the different organised crime mafias that seek to generate illicit income for the regime of Nicolás Maduro. The businessman is allegedly involved in the construction contracts of the social programme "Gran Misión Vivienda", which has turned out to be one of the biggest building and public works scams of the Chavista regime.
Ortega Díaz asserted that the money stolen by Saab is something that cannot be audited and that the people who have benefited most from this theft are the Maduro family and the first lady Cilia Flores; according to the former prosecutor, Saab was a partner of his sons and nephews in illicit businesses in the Dominican Republic, linked to hotel construction projects, and she also referred to Saab's supposed integration into the diplomatic corps, "it is not true that he is a diplomat. Where is the gazette accrediting him? Where is the gazette granting him naturalisation? These are inventions that they used at the last minute to take him away". Ortega Díaz considers the arrest of the Colombian businessman to be a key piece in uncovering the darkest secrets of the Venezuelan regime, as it could reveal the accounts, lines of connections and how the business of the illegal sale of gasoline, gold and coltan moves.
This is the second appeal filed by Saab's defence, and the last possible recourse to delay the extradition. If it is not successful, Saab will be escorted and transferred to the Amilcar Cabral airport in Isla de Sal, the most important terminal on the island, where he will be picked up by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), who will be in charge of his direct flight to the United States to be tried in federal courts. President Joe Biden received the news through the State Department, before the defence filed the appeal and then the Justice Department was informed, "the (US) State Department has already been notified and now we will proceed with the Justice Department", according to a source in the federal government, according to the Colombian newspaper El Tiempo.
Latin America Coordinator: José Antonio Sierra
