DEA investigation and the FinCEN files In 2016, Reuters reported that the U.S.
Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) had been investigating companies owned by Saab and Álvaro Pulido on suspicion of
money laundering from the illegal trafficking of
cocaine from Colombia.
2018 foiled arrest operation The Colombian Prosecution and the
Directorate of Criminal Investigation and Interpol (DIJIN) issued arrest warrants on 24 September 2018 against seven people, including Alex Saab, charged with asset laundering worth US$25 billion between 2004 and 2011, and planned to carry out an operation the following day. However, the operation was foiled after Eddie Andrés Pinto, a patrolman of the DIJIN who served as an interception analyst, alerted several members of the group about their arrests. As a response, Alex Saab escaped to Venezuela and his brothers, Luis Alberto and Amir, disconnected their cellphones and the authorities lost their track. After an investigation, a tip by an anonymous informant and an extortion complaint filed by a trusted person by Saab, the Colombian authorities identified Andrés Pinto as responsible; on 11 October he was arrested in
Bogotá and indicted by the Prosecution with bribery and illegal violation of communications or correspondence of an official nature. Pinto announced his intention to collaborate with the authorities. At the moment it was unknown if the indicted group and Saab contacted the DIJIN to leak information regarding the operation or if they were subject of extortion, and the Prosecution was evaluating if Pinto received benefits in exchange of the provided information. On 23 September 2018, one of Saab's lawyers filed a complaint with the prosecution for attempted extortion from a public official "who is providing confidential information about investigative proceedings against the Saab family using
WhatsApp and
Telegram messages, in exchange for some economic or labor purpose.” On 12 October, Andrés Pinto accepted the extortion charges that were indicted against him. According to the complaint in the audios and WhatsApp captures provided therein, Pinto requested
COP 500 million in exchange for erasing all the information that existed on behalf of Saab, stating that "there was nothing that compromised Saab or his family", but that they "were going to be captured as a measure of pressure".
Colombian, US and Swiss criminal charges On 8 May 2019, the Colombian prosecutors office charged Saab with crimes of money laundering, a concert to commit crimes, illicit enrichment, exports and fictitious imports and an aggravated fraud for events related to his Shatex company. Since September 2018, he is considered a fugitive in Colombia for failing to attend any judicial proceeding even with a firm arrest warrant. Saab was found not guity of the Colombian charges in May 2024.
Meetings with U.S. officials In November 2021 court records in the U.S. court case of an alleged ex-associate of Saab
Bruce Bagley, (who has pled guilty to Laundering about US$2.5 million in deposits from overseas accounts that were controlled by Saab) claimed that an intermediary (later identified by Bagley as Jorge Luis Hernández) told Bagley the $2.5 million he received from Saab was to pay lawyers who were assisting Saab with his cooperation with the U.S. government, who in meetings provided information on the Maduro government to U.S. authorities.
David Rivkin, one of Saab's attorneys, said Saab had not cooperated with American officials and the Venezuelan government were aware of all his activities. The meetings reportedly took place from 2017 until the U.S. money laundering charges were releveled in 2019.
Sanctions On 25 July 2019, the
United States Department of the Treasury imposed sanctions on 10 people and 13 companies (from
Colombia,
Hong Kong,
Mexico,
Panama,
Turkey, the
United Arab Emirates and the
U.S.) in
"CLAP", which includes
Nicolas Maduro's stepsons and Saab. According to a statement by Treasury Secretary
Steven Mnuchin, "The corruption network that operates the CLAP program has allowed Maduro and his family members to steal from the Venezuelan people. They use food as a form of social control, to reward political supporters and punish opponents, all the while pocketing hundreds of millions of dollars through a number of fraudulent schemes." The Maduro government rejected the sanctions, calling it sign of "desperation" by "the
gringo empire." Maduro said "Imperialists, prepare for more defeats, because the
CLAP in Venezuela will continue, no one takes the CLAP away from the people." A statement from the Venezuelan foreign ministry "denounces the repeated practice of economic terrorism by the US government against the Venezuelan people, announcing measures whose criminal purpose is to deprive all Venezuelans of their
right to food." According to Armando.Info, as a result of US investigations and sanctions, Saab moved his shell companies to
Turkey.
First Arrest 2020 detention On 12 June 2020, en route from Venezuela to
Iran on a business jet, Alex Saab was arrested during a fuel stop at
Cape Verde. Saab was arrested in accordance to an
Interpol red notice in relation to his indictment for money laundering in the United States. The Venezuelan government stated the red notice had been issued a day after Saab was detained. While no extradition treaty exists between Cape Verde and the U.S., legal experts have argued that Cape Verde is part of United Nations conventions that compel the country to comply with an Interpol red notice, regardless of the date when it was issued. The US deployed the
Navy cruiser
USS San Jacinto off Cape Verde from November to December 2020, on a secret mission to "deter Venezuela and Iran from plotting to spirit Mr. Saab away from the island".
The New York Times reported that "hard-liners at the Justice and State Departments, including
Elliott Abrams, the State Department's special envoy for Iran and Venezuela" were worried that Iranian or Venezuelan operatives could help Saab escape and that the US would "lose an unusual opportunity to punish Mr. Maduro". Saab said in a June 2021
CNN interview that he had been tortured by the authorities in Cape Verde. In August 2020, Saab asked Cape Verde's Prime Minister,
Ulisses Correia e Silva, to release him. The Russian government criticised the detention of Saab and the extradition request. Saab's wife, Italian model Camila Fabbri, moved to
Moscow with her family in early 2021.
Support campaign Shortly after his detention, on 14 June, the foreign affairs minister appointed by Maduro,
Jorge Arreaza, tweeted in support of Alex Saab, labeling his arrest as "arbitrary" and "illegal". Journalist expressed surprise by the declaration, saying that after years denying or ignoring its relationship with Saab, the government now called him a "government agent" and a "Venezuelan citizen". After Alex Saab's detention, the Venezuelan government started deploying a support campaign in favour of Saab, using government social media accounts and filling
Caracas with billboards, murals and graffitis to ask for his liberation. The government designed a communication campaign to build an alternative narrative of Saab's affair, showing him as an ally entrepreneur with diplomatic powers that with his efforts had managed to evade economic sanctions and made possible the arrival of food and industrial parts to Venezuela. In February 2021, the Venezuelan government organized a concert in support of Alex Saab in Caracas' Diego Ibarra Square, asking for his release. Two ruling party deputies visited Nigeria's embassy in Venezuela, also asking for his liberation. On 25 August 2020, the Attorney General of Cape Verde opened an investigation into two men who posed as representatives of the Cape Verde government and travelled to Venezuela to discuss Saab's case with President Maduro. An intelligence report accessed by the
Financial Times in early 2021 analysed more than half a million Twitter posts related to Alex Saab and concluded that Nicolás Maduro's administration "and/or its proxies (witting or unwitting) are involved in a coordinated campaign to influence both the government of Cape Verde and its population to obstruct Alex Saab's extradition". As a response to a
BuzzFeed News and the Digital Africa Research Lab (DigiAfricaLab) investigation,
Twitter suspended over 1,500 accounts in April 2021 for manipulating the #FreeAlexSaab hashtag, a hashtag used since mid-January as part of a campaign by a
Nigerian public relations firm and a United Kingdom-based nonprofit called Digital Good Governance for Africa that paid influencers to tweet about Saab in an effort to sway public opinion and court proceedings in Nigeria and Cape Verde. In June 2021, the platform
Cazadores de Fake News concluded that a marketing company called PromoCoreGH was leading an
astroturfing campaign in
Ghana in support of Saab, after analyzing 151,725 tweets and fifty Twitter accounts. In June 2021, the Venezuelan government started a
YouTube series dedicated to Saab. On 17 October 2021 it organized a demonstration in support of Saab.
Extradition process and legal battle, 2020-21 The Madrid-based law firm of former Spanish judge
Baltasar Garzón will represent Alex Saab in the
extradition case. Saab's defense team said that Saab "is the key figure for the U.S. in their plan to overthrow Nicolás Maduro and keep suffocating the Venezuelan people" On 30 November 2020, the
Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Court of Justice ordered Cape Verde to grant house arrest to Alex Saab. On 15 December, the Cape Verde Court of Appeals ruled to refuse the decision, arguing that ECOWAS Court lacks the jurisdiction to force Cape Verde to take decisions. Cape Verde also asked the ECOWAS Court to rescind the decision. On 29 December, Nicolás Maduro appointed Alex Saab as ambassador to the
African Union, seeking to send Saab to
Ethiopia and to prevent his extradition. On 5 January 2021, the Cape Verde Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Alex Saab's extradition. On 21 January, authorities of Cape Verde announced that his transfer to house arrest was approved. Experts consulted by
Voice of America declared that after the decision, the risk of his escape increased "exponentially". On 22 February 2021, the
United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida denied a request to cancel Saab's extradition request to the United States. On 15 March 2021, the ECOWAS Court of Justice ruled against Saab's extradition and ordered that he be freed because he was detained before the Interpol Red Notice was issued. It ordered Cape Verde to pay Saab 200,000 euros in compensation. Decisions of the Court of Justice are binding, but the court does not have the authority to enforce its judgements in member states, including Cape Verde. On 17 March, Cape Verde's Supreme Tribunal approved Saab's extradition request. Cape Verde later asked the ECOWAS to nullify the decision in favor of Alex Saab. In June 2021, the
United Nations Human Rights Committee asked Cape Verde to suspend Saab's extradition and to ensure he has access to specialised medical care chosen by him. The committee said it wanted time to analyse Saab's case. Cape Verde's Supreme Tribunal rejected the UN committee's request in a 39 pages-long decision, ruling that "Cape Verde is not forced to comply with the request" and that "sufficiently persuasive reasons to justify its reception do not exist". The Tribunal's three judges considered that the requests to the different Member States of the committee "are part of a constructive dialogue" that does not imply "any relationship of subordination", but rather of "complementarity", writing in the ruling that "This body presents its interpretation, which the State considers and responds if it freely deems it necessary to diverge with them". The justices also suggested that the committee did not have knowledge about Saab's record. In response, Saab's lawyer said the court had made a legal, strategic, and ethical mistake and was "send[ing] a clear message to the world that it can exercise its sovereignty to violate human rights while ignoring the norms of international human rights law to which it has subscribed". The Constitutional Court of Cape Verde heard the parties on 13 August 2021, after Alex Saab's lawyers appealed the decision of the country's Supreme Court of Justice to authorize his extradition to the United States. In August 2021, Saab's defence team asked that the site of his detention be moved from the island of
Sal to
Praia. It said Saab's health had deteriorated and that he needed access to specialist medical care for his cancer. On 1 September 2021, the Barlavento Court of Appeal granted Saab's request. Saab's defence team asked the Cape Verde courts to refuse Saab's extradition on the grounds that there were legal irregularities associated with his arrest. By September 2021, the request had reached the Cape Verde Constitutional Court. On 8 September 2021 the Constitutional Tribunal of Cape Verde rejected Saab's defence appeal and approved Saab's extradition to the United States on money laundering charges. The 194 page ruling agreed with the decision of two lower courts, the Barlovento Appeals Tribunal and the Supreme Tribunal of Justice, who had authorized the extradition in 2020 and March 2021, respectively, as well as supported the position of Cape Verde's government. On 14 September 2021,
Jorge Rodríguez, head of the Venezuelan government's delegation to
talks with the Venezuelan opposition mediated by
Norway taking place in
Mexico, declared that Saab had been appointed a member of the government's negotiation team. having made Saab's participation in the official team a condition of the negotiations. According to judicial documents published on 16 February 2022, Saab became a DEA informant in 2018, during which time he shared information with the United States justice system about the bribes that he offered to Venezuelan officials, his illicit activities and contracts with the Venezuelan government, planning to turn himself in. According to the documents, Saab met with American authorities between August 2016 and June 2019, and signed a cooperation agreement with the DEA in 2018. The documents also mentioned how in another meeting in June 2018 Saab admitted paying bribes related to food supply contracts. The documents state that, as part of the cooperation agreement with the American authorities, Saab wired over $10 million obtained through said operations to the DEA and held several meetings with agents and prosecutors in Colombia and Europe. According to prosecutors, the United States stopped considering him as a collaborator after Saab missed a 30 May 2019 deadline set for him to turn himself in and face charges in Florida. Another of Saab's lawyers that sought that the
Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit ruled in favor of diplomatic immunity,
David B. Rivkin, rejected that Saab cooperated. Rivkin said that the only purpose of Saab's meetings with US officials was to "confirm that neither he nor any company related to him had done anything wrong" and that the meetings were held with the "full knowledge and support" of the Maduro government. Rivkin also said that the release of the documents were an attempt to harm Venezuela and its relationship with Saab, and that it showed that the government's case was weak. Camilla Fabri, Saab's wife, also rejected on Twitter that cooperation took place, declared that the U.S. was "brazenly lying, like it did with Russia and Iraq" and that her husband "would never harm Venezuela". On 7 November, prosecutors presented documents casting doubt on defense evidence to argue that Saab, showing a printed copy of the Official Gazette of Venezuela edition No. 6,373 from 26 April 2018 obtained from the
United States Library of Congress that contradicted an electronic version introduced by the defense reportedly showing that by presidential decree Saab had been appointed special envoy. They also introduced a copy of Saab's purported diplomatic passport with a picture and signature matching another, non-diplomatic passport issued nearly two years later. The prosecution argued that the documents suggested potential forgery, and that if Saab was indeed a special envoy, the Maduro administration would have immediately referred to Saab as such, which did not happen until months later, along with the existence of a supposed diplomatic passport.
Release In December 2023, Saab was released from jail to be sent back to Venezuela in exchange for ten American prisoners being held in Venezuela in a
prisoner exchange. President Joe Biden issued a pardon to Saab with the following conditions: • Alex Saab must leave the United States. • Saab shall thereafter remain outside the boundaries of the United States, its territories and possessions. • Alex Saab shall not commit any additional crimes against the United States or in violation of the laws of the United States after acceptance of the pardon. • Saab will waive and release any and all claims, demands, rights and causes of action of any kind and nature against the United States of America, its agents, servants and employees. • As an individual and on behalf of the entities he controlled or was the beneficial owner of, he will waive any and all future claims and challenges and relinquish any and all funds and property already seized or subject to forfeiture in the United States in connection with the prosecution of offenses subject to the pardon. • Saab will not accept or receive any financial benefit directly or indirectly, in any form, or amount, from any book, film or other publication or production, in any form or medium, about his situation. Nicolás Maduro appointed Saab as president of the International Investment Centre of Venezuela after his return to Venezuela.
Second Arrest On February 4, 2026, Saab was arrested in Venezuela as part of a joint operation between American
FBI and Venezuelan authorities. Saab was captured around 2 a.m., and is under the custody of the
Bolivarian National Intelligence Service while his extradition to the United States is being determined. ==Political career==