The US Justice Department definitively dismissed all the charges against the Colombian businessman Alex Saab, an ally of the Government of the President of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, and who regained his freedom in December 2023.
According to a motion dated Thursday and entered in court today, federal judge Robert Scola granted the dismissal of all charges against Saab after the presidential pardon that the US president signed in his favor on December 15. .USA, Joe Biden.
Saab, who was accused, among other charges, of money laundering, was released that month in a prisoner exchange with Venezuela, which in turn freed ten Americans and nearly twenty Venezuelans considered “political prisoners.”
The businessman who was arrested on June 12, 2020 in Cape Verde following a US request through Interpol for alleged money laundering.
He was later extradited to the US, accused of money laundering conspiracy.
Colombian authorities were also looking for Saab for criminal conspiracy, illicit enrichment, fictitious exports and imports, and aggravated fraud.
On the same day of his release, and after arriving in Caracas, the businessman was received with hugs at the Miraflores presidential palace, headquarters of the Venezuelan Executive, by Maduro, who described him as “a brave and patriotic man.”
A month later, Maduro appointed Saab president of the country’s International Center for Productive Investment (CIIP), created in 2020 with the aim of attracting local and foreign capital to boost the national economy, as well as for “registration, study and monitoring.” of the sanctions imposed on the Venezuelan economy.
BY: TTU
