MIAMI — In a striking political shift that caps years of international legal wrangling, Venezuela’s transitional government confirmed Saturday it has deported Alex Saab, a once-powerful close associate of ousted Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, to the United States to face federal criminal proceedings. The move comes less than three years after Saab was pardoned by U.S. President Joe Biden as part of a high-stakes prisoner exchange between the two nations.
The 54-year-old Colombian-born businessman has long been labeled by U.S. officials as Maduro’s personal “bag man,” and his deportation marks a dramatic reversal of fortune. Just years ago, Maduro mounted an aggressive, all-out diplomatic and legal campaign to secure Saab’s release after his initial 2020 international arrest. Today, Saab’s transfer opens the door for U.S. prosecutors to compel his testimony against Maduro himself, who was captured in a surprise U.S. military raid in January and is currently awaiting trial on federal drug trafficking charges in a Manhattan courtroom.
In a brief official statement released Saturday, Venezuela’s national immigration authority did not explicitly name the country Saab was sent to, but confirmed the deportation order was issued in direct response to multiple active criminal investigations being conducted by U.S. authorities. The statement’s choice to identify Saab solely as a “Colombian citizen” is widely viewed as a deliberate workaround of Venezuelan national law, which explicitly bans the extradition of Venezuelan-born citizens. This framing also marks a sharp break from the previous Maduro administration’s claims, when officials including then-acting President Delcy Rodríguez (now Venezuela’s current transitional leader) insisted Saab was a Venezuelan diplomat carrying out an urgent humanitarian mission to Iran when he was detained during a refueling stop in 2020.
U.S. federal prosecutors have been scrutinizing Saab’s role in an alleged bribery and kickback conspiracy tied to Venezuelan government food import contracts for months, The Associated Press has confirmed. The investigation traces back to a 2021 federal prosecution filed in Miami against Saab’s long-time business partner, Alvaro Pulido, according to a former U.S. law enforcement official familiar with the case. The probe centers on activities tied to the CLAP program, a signature Maduro administration initiative launched to distribute subsidized staple goods including rice, corn flour and cooking oil to low-income Venezuelans grappling with devastating hyperinflation and a collapsed national economy.
Saab amassed a massive personal fortune through his exclusive access to Venezuelan government contracts during Maduro’s tenure, but he fell out of favor rapidly following Maduro’s ouster in January. Since taking office as the head of Venezuela’s new transitional government on January 3, Rodríguez has moved systematically to cut Saab from power: he was removed from the cabinet, stripped of his influential position as the primary gatekeeper for foreign companies seeking investment access to Venezuela, and has been the subject of conflicting reports for months claiming he was either imprisoned or placed under house arrest.
As of Saturday evening, the U.S. Department of Justice had not issued an immediate response to requests for comment on Saab’s deportation. Associated Press reporter Eric Tucker contributed additional reporting for this story from Washington, D.C.