A Dangerous Assignment

A DANGEROUS ASSIGNMENT Feb. 4, 2025

JUAN RAVELL, Director:

[Speaking Spanish] Has this investigation been worth it?

ROBERTO DENIZ, Armando.info:

[Speaking Spanish] Professionally, I always say it’s been worth it.

JUAN RAVELL:

[Speaking Spanish] And personally?

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] That answer is more complicated.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] It’s like I’ve always said and repeated many times, it would have been easier to look away. Perhaps easier and more sane.

I didn’t know who I was investigating. I didn’t understand all the connections I would find or the sheer size of the operation. What happens, in a regime like Venezuela, when journalism dares to investigate someone so powerful?

JORGE RAMOS:

[Speaking Spanish] Our next guest has been covering Alex Saab for years. Roberto Deniz is a reporter for the website Armando.info, and he is wanted by the Venezuelan government for his reporting.

FEMALE NEWSREADER:

[Speaking Spanish] And now, the investigations . . . about Colombian businessman Alex Saab.

FEMALE NEWSREADER:

[Speaking Spanish] One of Interpol’s most wanted fugitives, Alex Saab, was captured on the African island of Cape Verde.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] Do you know anything about a businessman who was captured here? A representative of the Venezuelan government?

TAXI DRIVER:

[Speaking Spanish] You’re talking about Alex Saab. They arrested him here.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] Alex Saab’s story shows us how a regime maintains power.

MARSHALL BILLINGSLEA, Asst. Sec. U.S. Dept. of Treasury (2017-21):

This is story of corruption, of kleptocracy, on a scale that the world has not seen.

JORGE RAMOS:

[Speaking Spanish] What does Alex Saab know about the dictator Nicolás Maduro? Why are they so afraid of him talking?

JOSHUA GOODMAN, The Associated Press:

Alex Saab is ultimately a chameleon. To some people he is a revolutionary; to others he’s a spy. He’s loyal to Maduro. He’s a traitor.

NICOLÁS MADURO, President of Venezuela:

[Speaking Spanish] Who ordered the kidnapping of Alex Saab and took him to the United States?

GERARDO REYES, Director, Univision Investigative Unit:

[Speaking Spanish] Why does Maduro keep defending Saab if he knows he was a snitch for the U.S. government?

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] There are a lot of things in the story that we still don’t know.

Los Andes University

Bogotá, Colombia

FEMALE PROFESSOR:

[Speaking Spanish] Today we’re talking about covering the powerful in this master’s degree journalism class. Roberto Deniz is here to talk about his investigation into the Venezuelan government and allegedly corrupt contractors. It’s a very interesting case because of the costs that journalists pay when they cover a case like this one. Roberto is here and you can ask him questions. Ready? Welcome.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] Thank you very much. As you well know, in 2013 Hugo Chávez died in Venezuela.

Chávez’s Funeral, 2013

NICOLÁS MADURO:

[Speaking Spanish] ’Till we reach victory, Commander.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] There is a bumpy political transition to say the least. Nicolás Maduro is elected president.

NICOLÁS MADURO:

[Speaking Spanish] . . . he saved us from slander, from infamy, from evil, and he died undefeated. Pure. Transparent. Unique. Truthful. Alive. For always. From now until always. They could never bring you down, Commander. And they will never bring us down. Never.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] If you look at the timeline, as soon as he arrived in power Maduro’s only goal was preserving the revolution. An economic crisis had been brewing in the country and it turns out to be enormous. It was a product of years of economic mismanagement. For many years, during the oil boom, the Venezuelan state came to depend on imported food. Oil prices fell, and there was a huge fiscal deficit. It was the perfect storm and caused massive shortages on a scale never-before seen in the country.

Caracas, Venezuela

WOMAN 1 ON FOOD LINE:

[Speaking Spanish] Maduro, there’s no food. There is nothing.

WOMAN 2 ON FOOD LINE:

[Speaking Spanish] We’ve been here since 4:00 a.m.

WOMAN 3 ON FOOD LINE:

[Speaking Spanish] Tell him that we’ve had enough. We’re tired of all the lines.

WOMAN PROTESTER:

[Speaking Spanish] This is every day we come to protest. Enough of this.

NICOLÁS MADURO:

[Speaking Spanish] Oh, my God. What’s going to happen? What happens in Venezuela is what we make happen. Because in Venezuela the revolution calls the shots. Now we’re beginning a new economic revolution in the Venezuelan food economy. I’m announcing the birth of a new national program, “The Local Committees for Supply and Production,” the “CLAP” program.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] The CLAP program is officially born in March of 2016. The CLAP boxes contained products of everyday Venezuelan consumption.

FEMALE NEWSREADER:

[Speaking Spanish] The program distributes a total of 25,000 tons of food for more than a million Venezuelan families.

NICOLÁS MADURO:

[Speaking Spanish] We must go house to house to deliver love. Food is coming house to house and home to home. CLAP is not just boxes and bags, damn it. CLAP is love in action. The CLAP program is empowering our people . . .

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] The CLAP program arrived in our newsroom for simple journalistic curiosity. Armando.info is a site exclusively dedicated to investigative journalism in a country defined by corruption.

NICOLÁS MADURO:

[Speaking Spanish] CLAP products are of the highest quality in our country and in the world. Am I lying?

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] The public discourse about what CLAP was going to be did not square with reality. It was something we had to look into.

I. Bad Milk

TWITTER VIDEO:

[Speaking Spanish] I want to show this so that we all see what we’re drinking. At the bottom it’s like sand. You don’t even know what it is.

TWITTER VIDEO:

[Speaking Spanish] While making the milk, look at what we found. I don’t know what kind of poison they’re giving us Venezuelans.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] Complaints from mothers saying the CLAP products were terrible quality were becoming more and more frequent. Especially the powdered milk.

All of us at Armando.info, but especially Patricia and I, decided to find a methodology to determine if the powdered milk was indeed powdered milk. There was no pattern as to which products, or which brands, were used in the boxes.

PATRICIA MARCANO, Armando.info:

[Speaking Spanish] We chose eight powdered milk brands from CLAP boxes—

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] —and took them to the Central University of Venezuela to do a physical and chemical analysis.

PABLO HERNÁNDEZ, Nutrition specialist, Central University of Venezuela:

[Speaking Spanish] If you ask me if these products are milk, the answer is plainly, no. As a researcher, I am outraged with these results. They are deceiving the consumer by saying that this is fortified with calcium. When we look at the analysis there are significant differences with the printed nutrition facts.

When you look at a product high in carbohydrates and very low in calcium you can’t call it milk. Nutritionally speaking, it is closer to rice flour. A very small child who consumes this type of milk doesn’t have a renal system that is developed enough to handle those high levels of sodium. We are looking at an important case of food fraud.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] Venezuelan and Mexican authorities eventually conceded there were problems with some of the CLAP products.

We needed to find out who was behind the importation of these products. When you looked at the products in the CLAP box you noticed that they were mostly imported products. So at an assignment meeting, I volunteered to investigate.

Tracking down who is selling food to the government in most countries of the world is a matter of public record. In Venezuela, under Chavism, this type of information is very protected. You can’t find out unless you use alternative sources. One of these sources—someone with deep knowledge of the Venezuelan ports—the source told me, “Roberto . . . I have something you might find interesting.”

These are some of the documents the source gave me in a restaurant in Caracas. There were invoices for the products in the CLAP boxes sold by a company called Group Grand Limited. On the letterhead there’s an address in Hong Kong. The invoices were made out to a subsidiary of the Ministry of Food Supply. They confirmed that this company was involved in the CLAP business. So we have a business registered in Hong Kong that buys food in Mexico and sells it to the Venezuelan government. The only thing I knew for sure was they were hiding someone.

So I went looking in the Hong Kong business registry. And I found that one of the company’s directors was named Shadi Saab. And despite Group Grand Limited being registered in Hong Kong, there was also an address in Caracas.

Avenue Francisco de Miranda Centro Galipan, etc.

I go to this office in Caracas. I walk up to the security desk and I say I’m going to the office for Group Grand Limited. They tell me the office isn’t there. Because that office belonged to Fondo Global de Construcción.

FONDO GLOBAL DE CONSTRUCCIÓN PROMOTIONAL VIDEO:

[Speaking Spanish] Fondo Global de Construcción. We are a business leader in infrastructure . . .

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] Fondo Global de Construcción was already known to Armando.info from a previous investigation. As soon as I saw the name, I was like, “Boom.”

It was obvious that who ran the company wasn’t Shadi Saab. It was his father, Alex Saab.

MALE NEWSREADER:

[Speaking Spanish] Within the framework of the great housing mission for Columbia, Alex Saab, legal representative of Fondo Global de Construcción.

II. Saab’s Story

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] At the end of 2011, Alex Saab arrived in Venezuela with a newly registered business and started getting multimillion-dollar contracts to build public housing. This was an area in which he had no experience.

Carabobo, Venezuela

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] Fondo Global de Construcción obtained contracts to build about 2,500 apartments in the state of Carabobo, but they didn’t even finish 100 of the apartments. That’s less than 4% of the total contract. Half-finished buildings were just abandoned. There are still people today waiting for those apartments to be built.

This new information helped us understand Alex Saab wasn’t just in the construction business. But from 2015 until 2017, he became Maduro’s favorite contractor. Any economic program Maduro wanted to run, Alex Saab was the person he asked to run it. And the most emblematic example is the CLAP program.

We didn’t know why Saab became Maduro’s favorite contractor. But his fingerprints were all over the place, including Group Grand Limited. What our stories revealed is that Alex Saab, a longtime contractor for the Venezuelan government, was now the biggest contractor for the CLAP program and the man Maduro trusted most to import food for the state.

The first big CLAP contract given to Alex Saab was for $340 million USD for 10 million boxes. That’s $34 per box. When these poor-quality products that they were buying cost less than $20 per box on the market.

When we published the story we put a target on our backs. We knew this could easily become personal.

One day I was leaving my house and I see two officials from the Venezuelan Judicial Police who said they are there to give me a document. The surprise came when I looked at the papers and I saw Alex Saab’s name in a lawsuit against me and Armando.info’s editors. He was suing me for continued aggravated defamation and injury.

In the lawsuit, Alex Saab denied the facts of our reporting. And later, he denied any connection with the CLAP business.

From the moment I saw the lawsuit it was very clear to me that this was an attempt to intimidate us. The message was either be quiet or get ready for the consequences.

In Venezuela, lawsuits like this can result in criminal convictions and multi-year prison sentences for journalists. Obviously, the risk of staying in Venezuela and continuing to publish about Alex Saab was enormous. Finally, the editors of Armando.info and I decided to leave the country. I believe, to this day, that it was the right decision. That our best defense was to continue investigating the story.

Bogotá, Colombia

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] My first concern about moving to another country was how I would continue the investigation. And the moment we left Venezuela was the same moment we realized there was a lot of interest in Alex Saab outside of Venezuela.

Miami, Florida

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] At the same time I was doing my reporting, other journalists were also investigating Alex Saab because of all the scandal related to his work at Fondo Global de Construcción and the unfinished houses. One of those journalists is Gerardo Reyes, who works in Miami. He discovered some important things for the investigation.

GERARDO REYES:

[Speaking Spanish] Among journalists we started hearing Alex Saab’s name more frequently coming up in Venezuela. I started looking into Saab and his associates in Venezuela. I wanted to find out how, with almost no reputation, they had risen to such heights within the political establishment of Venezuela. How he did it is quite impressive. Because a man with nothing, who had lost everything, had become one of the most powerful men within the Maduro regime.

Alex Saab was born into a Lebanese immigrant family in Barranquilla, Colombia, where he opened his own textile business in the mid-’90s. But the business didn’t go very well.

Alex Saab was broke until he realized his future was in Venezuela.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] While he was still in Colombia, Alex Saab met former Colombian Senator Piedad Cordoba, who would be the key figure for Saab to access big contracts with the Venezuelan government.

But even more importantly, he also met the man who became his business partner in Venezuela: Álvaro Pulido. Since signing the first Fondo Global de Construcción contract in Venezuela, Alex Saab and Álvaro Pulido did all their business together.

III. The Perfect Partner

GERARDO REYES:

[Speaking Spanish] I started looking into Álvaro Pulido’s life and I discover he had a very dark past. I figured out that using the Miami consulate he fraudulently changed his identity. His name wasn’t Álvaro Pulido. His name was Germán Rubio Salas. And he was the leader of a very efficient drug trafficking and money laundering cartel with operations in Europe.

Bogotá, May 2000

MALE LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICER:

[Speaking Spanish] Germán Enrique Rubio Salas is the leader of this criminal organization. He has criminal records and is also wanted for drug trafficking in Germany and Italy. He faces a 15-year prison sentence in Italy and an extradition order from Milan.

GERARDO REYES:

[Speaking Spanish] After his arrest he served more than five years in prison. Once he’s out, he reinvents himself and starts to build himself a new life.

So here should be the death of . . . Pulido! It is this dead man’s name that Germán Rubio takes to start his new life in Venezuela.

But what finally convinced me of Pulido’s deception was that when I approached him for an interview so he could explain the name change, he promised to send me an official explanation, and I’m still waiting for it today.

Pulido, as a convicted drug trafficker, brought his experience creating shell companies and laundering money to all his business dealings with Saab.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] Pulido is like the mastermind behind the financial operations. He would create the companies that allow them to hide money. And Alex Saab was the face of the operation, especially for politicians and connections.

GERARDO REYES:

[Speaking Spanish] Saab left Barranquilla deep in debt and returned with a new model wife, moved into the same building as Shakira and now he starts living the good life.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] Alex Saab builds himself a very luxurious mansion in Barranquilla. He starts using an impressive collection of private jets. He buys an apartment in Via Condotti, one of Rome’s most expensive streets. And he rents a big mansion in Beverly Hills for his son Shadi to live in while he tries to become an actor in Hollywood. Alex Saab starts showing up as executive producer on one of Shadi’s films.

This was all happening while Shadi was listed as a director of Group Grand Limited, the company importing poor-quality milk.

Shadi Saab, Alex Saab’s son

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] An interesting element of Shadi’s short-lived career as an aspiring actor is that in the pilot for a TV show called “King of LA” he plays the role of the son of a gangster who is a Colombian drug trafficker.

“King of LA”

MALE ACTOR:

I was born in the same village as your father, man. I love your father. He was a great man. He is a great man, he’s a great man.

Miami, Florida

JOSHUA GOODMAN:

Alex Saab began to appear on my radar around 2016, 2017, when some local journalists, Amando.info, Roberto Deniz, started reporting about these lucrative food contracts that he had signed with the Venezuelan government. Everyone was trying to figure out, “Who is this guy? Why is he so important to the Venezuelan government?” The United States started asking these same questions and he became a target of U.S. law enforcement.

Maduro’s reelection in 2018 is a turning point. That’s when the U.S. determines that Venezuela has taken a turn towards a dictatorship. So 2018, 2019 especially, the U.S. really ratchets up the pressure on Venezuela with sanctions.

January 28, 2019

STEVEN MNUCHIN:

Thank you. Today Treasury took action against Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, PDVSA, to help prevent the further diversion of Venezuela’s assets by Maduro and will preserve these assets for the people of Venezuela where they belong.

JOSHUA GOODMAN:

When the U.S. slapped sanctions on Venezuela, Alex Saab hit a jackpot. The country didn’t stop doing business. They still have tons of oil. They need to get it out of the country. Alex Saab sees an opportunity, and he became their go-to person for getting around the sanctions. The U.S. determines that Alex Saab is the critical linchpin keeping the Maduro government afloat. There was a clear determination that Nicolas Maduro needed to go, and the way to go after him was attacking his money people.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] As Alex Saab began to gain notoriety, other countries began their own investigations. In Europe, for example, as well as in the U.S. He needed people in Venezuela, ideally people from the opposition parties, to help clear his businesses’ names and improve his reputation abroad to continue doing business. In this moment, the Venezuelan Congress was controlled by the opposition parties, so it was the only legitimate government body in the eyes of the international community.

A source told me that Alex Saab was buying opposition lawmakers. The source was someone very close to one of the legislators involved in this plan.

JUAN RAVELL:

[Speaking Spanish] Do you think this source would talk to us?

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] Maybe. Yes, maybe.

Brooklyn, New York

ROSA GARRIDO, Parliamentary Assistant (2016-19):

[Speaking Spanish] My name is Rosa Virginia Garrido. I was a parliamentary assistant in Congress. I started working with Luis Parra because he was one of the politicians who wanted political change in Venezuela.

FEMALE NEWSREADER:

[Speaking Spanish] Our guest is Congressman Luis Eduardo Parra, who is a member of the opposition coalition.

ROSA GARRIDO:

[Speaking Spanish] His rhetoric was honest, direct and provocative.

LUIS PARRA:

[Speaking Spanish] . . . but above all, remember, we can topple this dictatorship if we take to the streets until they are removed from power.

We need to call out with a single voice to Nicolás Maduro that he will not find enablers here in Yaracuy.

ROSA GARRIDO:

[Speaking Spanish] But in politics, anything can happen. Anyone can take advantage of a situation. There are no eternal allies nor permanent enemies.

On April 8, 2017, I was covering a march organized by the opposition. And a police officer stole my phone. Days later Luis Parra says to me, “Rosa, you know what? I’m getting a new phone so you can have mine. You need it for your work.” So, Luis gave me his phone. I used it for work and as my personal phone. When he gives me the phone he leaves all the apps open and connected. Mail, Facebook, Instagram, messaging apps . . . So, I saw all his conversations in real time.

One day, I see something new. “Carlos Lizcano: Salva Foods” is added as a contact in Telegram. None other than Alex Saab’s third-in-command.

Carlos Lizcano, Saab Associate

ROSA GARRIDO:

[Speaking Spanish] Since 2016, they had been denouncing the CLAP program in Congress. What is Carlos Lizcano doing in the contacts of an opposition lawmaker? Absurd. Totally absurd.

I decided to contact Roberto because this was outrageous. So, I told Roberto I’m looking at a Telegram conversation between Luis Parra and Carlos Lizcano. Roberto was dumbstruck. He said, “Do you have any idea what you have in your hands?”

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] All these chats are the step-by-step blueprints of Operation Scorpion, which started with the goal of improving Saab’s business image, but in the end would sow chaos in the Venezuelan opposition to the benefit of Maduro.

IV. Operation Scorpion

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] You can see the familiarity between them because Lizcano greets Parra saying, “How’s it going, brother?”

ROSA GARRIDO:

[Speaking Spanish] Parra responds, “All good, brother, moving ahead.”

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] You could see the whole recruitment process of the other legislators. So Parra, for example, there was a moment they were having lunch, a group of lawmakers, and he sends this picture to Lizcano and he says, “Here I am.”

ROSA GARRIDO:

[Speaking Spanish] He writes, “This was yesterday for the thing.”

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] And Lizcano answers him, “Get moving, buddy.”

ROSA GARRIDO:

[Speaking Spanish] Parra: “Can you give me and my colleague a four-month advance?” He’s saying, “Give me the money. If we don’t get paid, we aren’t moving forward.”

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] They are literally negotiating a transaction. A lawmaker offering services for money.

These same lawmakers organized a secret trip to Europe where the goal was basically to deliver official, signed letters defending Alex Saab’s businesses in various countries saying that the companies had been investigated and there were no irregularities. This trip included a number of countries: Bulgaria, Portugal, Liechtenstein. In each and every one of these countries there was either an open investigation against Saab himself, or one of his companies or frozen assets in an account.

I contacted everyone involved to hear their version. And they denied they were doing anything for Saab or his companies. Luis Parra was the first one I called.

Interview excerpts

LUIS PARRA [on phone]:

[Speaking Spanish] Hello?

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] Hello?

LUIS PARRA [on phone]:

[Speaking Spanish] Good afternoon.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] Yes, Congressman, how are you? My name is Roberto Deniz, I work for Armando info . . . Do you know a businessman named Carlos Lizcano, owner of a company called Salva Foods?

LUIS PARRA [on phone]:

[Speaking Spanish] No, brother. I can’t say I know him, no . . .

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] You work together with some other lawmakers who took a trip to Europe . . . and I’ve heard that trip was funded by Alex Saab, directly or indirectly . . .

LUIS PARRA [on phone]:

[Speaking Spanish] Listen, I spend a lot of my own money in my work as a legislator. Now I’m listening to you and thinking, “Look how low the politics of this country have fallen. . . . You start talking about this and I’m here thinking, where do you get funds to run your news portal, by extorting people? . . .

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] I will consider that as your answer.

LUIS PARRA [on phone]:

[Speaking Spanish] Well, brother, consider it whatever you want. It’s what happens when you go to these extremes.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] Well, but . . .

LUIS PARRA [on phone]:

[Speaking Spanish] You are here asking me who I got lunch with.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] I’m not asking about lunch, Congressman. I’m asking you about a trip with two other congressmen. It’s natural to think it was a work-related trip.

LUIS PARRA [on phone]:

[Speaking Spanish] Brother, I could be traveling with five congressmen and 10 prostitutes and I don’t have to tell you anything.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] With the publication of our story what we ended up revealing was the swamp in Venezuelan politics.

MALE REPORTER:

[Speaking Spanish] . . . what we want to know is where did this money come from?

LUIS PARRA:

[Speaking Spanish] The topic of corruption is a very big subject. We can talk about thousands of different cases. We’re going to investigate and we’ll get to the bottom of this. Armando.info will need to present their proof . . .

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] Some time later, these videos of their European tour were leaked. You see them with full shopping bags.

MALE VOICE:

[Speaking Spanish] [Laughter] You are such a thief.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] You see them counting packs of money.

And the political phase of Operation Scorpion is when this breaks, when we publish our story. Mr. Luis Parra is elected president of the Congress with the help of the Chavist minority there.

FEMALE NEWSREADER:

A faction of supporters loyal to Maduro seized the floor, and by a quick show of hands and no formal vote, they declared a winner.

MALE NEWSREADER:

[Speaking Spanish] Tension at the gates of the Venezuelan Congress.

FEMALE NEWSREADER:

[Speaking Spanish] The Chavists have elected a member of the Primero Justicia party.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] It looked as if the opposition had fractured, that it had been divided between Parra and the internationally recognized opposition leader, Juan Guaido. . . . Maduro made it clear who he supported.

NICOLÁS MADURO:

[Speaking Spanish] Congress has made a decision and there is now new leadership in the opposition led by Congressman Luis Parra.

FEMALE NEWSREADER:

[Speaking Spanish] Luis Parra is not a famous legislator, and until Nov. 1, he supported Juan Guaido.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] People started referring Parra as the leader of “the CLAP faction.” And they would end up being useful to Maduro in the future.

But outside of Venezuela, the pressure on Saab continued to grow, especially in the United States.

JOSHUA GOODMAN:

At the tip of the spear of the U.S. government campaign to go after Alex Saab was the U.S. Justice Department and the U.S. Treasury Department. Marshall Billingslea at Treasury, he was really the point man that I think was pushing the bureaucracy. He had really fixated on this guy and thought that he was Maduro’s bagman and needed to go.

V. USA vs. Saab

MARSHALL BILLINGSLEA, Asst. Sec. U.S. Dept. of Treasury (2017-21):

It was very quickly after the Trump administration came to office and I joined the U.S. Treasury that Alex Saab came to our attention. He’s moved an enormous amount of money from the regime around the world. He’s stolen enormous amounts of money for Maduro and his cronies. Alex Saab was prolific in the way that he created shell companies around the world. It was my role in the Treasury to do everything that I could to help protect the U.S. financial system and to support our friends and our allies. In the case of Alex Saab, this is an individual who is abusing the international financial system. And the things he was doing on behalf of Maduro were unconscionable.

JOSHUA GOODMAN:

The United States has unique jurisdiction over financial crimes because of the strength of the U.S. financial system. Wall Street banks kind of reach everywhere in the world. Even if you’re sending money from Venezuela to, say, Germany, it probably goes through a correspondent bank in New York, and that gives the U.S. prosecutors unique jurisdiction to prosecute wrongdoing. And that’s what happened with the case with Alex Saab.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] On July 25, 2019, Alex Saab was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department. That same day, federal prosecutors in Miami indicted him on money laundering charges.

On June 12, 2020, Alex Saab gets on a flight from Caracas destined for Iran to close a business deal, in Maduro’s name, with Iran.

JOSHUA GOODMAN:

His plane could not make it to Iran in one flight. It had to stop somewhere in Africa. The U.S. learns that he’s trying to get landing permission. They locate him in Cape Verde, identify him as Alex Saab and effectuate an arrest based on an unsealed-now U.S. warrant.

FEMALE NEWSREADER:

[Speaking Spanish] One of Interpol’s most wanted fugitives, the Colombian businessman Alex Saab, and the presumed accomplice of Nicolás Maduro in a fraud associated with food imports destined for the poorest citizens of Venezuela, was captured in Cape Verde on the African coast.

MALE NEWSREADER:

[Speaking Spanish] As soon as the United States knew that Interpol had captured Saab they immediately called for his extradition.

Praia, Cape Verde

2021

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] Here is where the Supreme Court publishes news, and we can see here one of the appeals made by Alex Saab’s lawyers to try and nullify his extradition to the United States.

If Alex Saab ends up being extradited to the U.S., it is obviously very bad for the Venezuelan government because for all he has done over the years in Venezuela, he knows things they don’t want out there.

Sal, Cape Verde

JOSHUA GOODMAN:

Venezuela is a petrostate. It depends exclusively on the sale of oil for income. And Alex Saab knows a lot about where all of this money is flowing, whether it’s Russia, Iran, Turkey. It’s Alex Saab who really has the keys to the kingdom in terms of explaining how this government is surviving despite being under incredible international pressure due to U.S. sanctions.

NICOLÁS MADURO:

[Speaking Spanish] A good man was kidnapped, an innocent man, a hard-working man, a man who loves the Venezuelan people.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] I imagined, at this point, that if Saab had been detained it was only a matter of time before he was extradited. But after his arrest we start hearing this version of the story that had never been heard before: that Mr. Alex Saab was a Venezuelan diplomat.

NICOLÁS MADURO:

[Speaking Spanish] The U.S. empire has kidnapped a Venezuelan diplomat, which violates every international law.

JOSHUA GOODMAN:

Maduro’s embrace of Alex Saab is unprecedented. Before his arrest Nicolás Maduro never mentions Alex Saab. He was someone who operated in the shadows. Alex Saab was providing incredibly important services to the Venezuelan government at the time of his arrest. However, he had never, until that moment, been called a Venezuelan diplomat. That changes with his arrest. That became the rallying cry in Caracas to get him out of trouble.

NICOLÁS MADURO:

[Speaking Spanish] This food that was delivered, the imported food from abroad, was brought here by Alex Saab. And he did it because he loves our country.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] Maduro’s government made an official statement defending Alex Saab, released hours after his detention, admitted what they had wanted to hide for years. It admitted Alex Saab was in charge of administering most of the CLAP food imports. When Alex Saab sued me and the editors of Armando.info he denied his connection to the CLAP program. This new statement confirmed all of our investigative reporting about how this man controlled the imports of food as well as medicine and other key businesses.

No. They’re not answering.

MALE VOICE [on phone]:

[Speaking Spanish] Hello?

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] Hello, good afternoon. My name is Roberto Deniz. I’m a reporter and I’d like to speak with you. Do you think we could do an interview?

MALE VOICE [on phone]:

[Speaking Spanish] No, no. I’m not talking about that topic.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] They don’t want to talk either.

FEMALE TELEPHONE OPERATOR:

The number you have dialed is not available.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] I’m seeing that at the administrative level there is a reluctance and a lot of worry about discussing the case. Today, for example, I called the chief of police of Cape Verde, and the conversation didn’t even last 30 seconds.

JOSHUA GOODMAN:

Alex Saab is a very uncomfortable prisoner for any country, and in Cape Verde they were really caught between a rock and a hard place. The U.S. was asserting enormous amounts of pressure on Cape Verde to hand over this guy. At one point even diverts a Navy warship to the eastern Atlantic Ocean, just sort of to remind everyone that this was a key target of theirs.

FEMALE NEWSREADER:

[Speaking Spanish] Maria Zakharova, the official representative of the Russian Federation’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, has expressed that the United States is using the case against the Venezuelan businessman Alex Saab as a means of putting pressure of Nicolás Maduro.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] Around Alex Saab there was a kind of cold war brewing because, on one side, there were the allies of the Bolivarian Revolution, basically Russia, Iran and China, and on the other side, the United States pursuing Saab. And again, there is this campaign supporting Saab and his supposed diplomatic status.

JOSHUA GOODMAN:

He’s now almost a revolutionary martyr in the eyes of the Maduro government. There’s graffiti, there’s posters, there’s documentaries, there’s poetry. There’s all kinds of homages paid to Alex Saab, which show how critically important he is to Maduro’s survival.

MALE RAPPER:

[Rapping in Spanish] Free Alex Saab. Free Alex Saab. I fell in love with Venezuela and its revolution. In 2015 I began importing food to help stop the crisis.

PRIEST:

[Speaking Spanish] The crime of brother Alex was that he left to bring back food.

ROGER WATERS, Pink Floyd:

Alex, we are with you. And we are solidly with you. And we will stay with you until you are out of prison.

JOSHUA GOODMAN:

And then it also had this darker side where they attacked the journalists who were actually doing real reporting about Alex Saab. People like Roberto Deniz.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] “Here’s how the criminal Roberto Deniz got into Cape Verde with the help of the CIA.” And there’s a whole article here. Here’s a whole series of social media attacks—obviously anonymous accounts that have been used for this campaign against me over the past months. They’re trying to intimidate me and influence my reporting work while I’m here.

“Alex Saab: A Kidnapped Diplomat” film

CAMILLA FABRI, Wife of Alex Saab:

[Speaking Spanish] They didn’t even let me, his wife, in, or the girls. We couldn’t even go to Cape Verde. Who did they let in? This supposed journalist. He’s been trying to defame Alex for years. He’s a journalist who is paid to tell lies. He wants the lies to become reality.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] The information that I have is that even after his detention and house arrest Alex Saab was still running his businesses in Caracas through Álvaro Pulido.

While Saab was detained, a new source contacted me. The source claims to have tons of information about Alex Saab’s businesses and operations in Russia. All of this comes from an office they had in Moscow.

VI. The Russia Office

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] When this new source writes to me they do it from a Russian phone number.

Voice message

ANONYMOUS SOURCE:

[Speaking Spanish] Good evening, Roberto. For my security I will remain anonymous. I’m contacting you because I’ve seen that you have followed the case of Alex Saab very closely. I have lots of valuable information. I have addresses, I have photos, passwords to accounts and much more delicate information as well, but we’ll talk about that in person.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] My first thought was that this could be a trap, because I don’t know what I am dealing with.

But, after several messages exchanged between me and this source, I agreed to meet him. And we met in a hotel in Bogotá.

The most valuable thing the source shared with me was the name of a young Colombian who seems to be running operations of that office in Moscow for the business of Alex Saab and Álvaro Pulido. Her name was María Camila Ballen Hernández.

Once I had the information about the office and María Camila Ballen Hernández’s name, obviously I wanted to know who she was. Her name wasn’t on my radar. I found her name popping up associated with a bunch of businesses registered in Russia designed to continue Saab and Pulido’s operations.

She never responded to my attempts to talk to her. With additional reporting, I found out that the Moscow office was fundamentally focused on the oil business.

Maduro began relying on Saab and Pulido to help avoid sanctions placed by the U.S. Department of the Treasury on the Venezuelan state oil business. This business’s goal was to sell oil without anyone knowing it was coming from Venezuela. The operation was designed by Venezuela’s oil minister, Tareck El Aissami. I imagine that they felt the close relationship between Putin and Maduro’s regimes offered a kind of judicial cover.

But there was a much bigger scandal behind this operation. They never actually paid Venezuela the money for those oil exports.

Shortly after these conversations, I got a leaked internal document from the Venezuelan state oil business, PDVSA, which shows a list of intermediaries that sold Venezuelan oil, but some of them never paid back PDVSA. In this list are many of the businesses connected to Saab and Pulido in countries including Russia and Mexico. These businesses owed Venezuela about $1.5 billion. We’re talking about oil that they exported supposedly to sell, which they did, but they never paid PDVSA for it.

One of the biggest questions in this whole story is why Maduro is so interested in defending Mr. Alex Saab? I think part of it is fear. The fear that people will find out that all the money Alex Saab has made in his businesses—housing, food imports, oil—was money he made for himself, money for him and his people, or was the money also for Nicolás Maduro? It’s a good question.

But I think it would justify the #FreeAlexSaab campaign and the effort to avoid his extradition to the U.S.

VII. The Extradition

MALE NEWSREADER:

[Speaking Spanish] Another piece of breaking news: The Constitutional Tribunal has authorized the extradition of Alex Saab to the United States.

FEMALE NEWSREADER:

[Speaking Spanish] The Constitutional Tribunal has authorized the extradition to the United States of Alex Saab, the alleged front for Nicolás Maduro.

FEMALE NEWSREADER:

[Speaking Spanish] The highest court in the African country denied the appeals of Alex Saab’s lawyers, who had questioned the constitutionality of the legal process since the man accused of being Maduro’s front man was imprisoned more than a year ago.

Bogotá, Colombia

RADIO INTERVIEWER:

[Speaking Spanish] . . . Armando.info, and the person who knows this story best is Roberto Deniz. Roberto, welcome back to the show. Good afternoon.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] Hello, good afternoon, and glad to be with you.

RADIO INTERVIEWER:

[Speaking Spanish] Why is this news important? Is this the final sign that Saab is heading to the United States?

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] Today the Constitutional Tribunal ratified the extradition request, which means all that is left now is to authorize the extradition.

ROBERTO’S FATHER [on phone]:

[Speaking Spanish] Roberto, how are you?

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] Hi, Dad. Good, and you?

ROBERTO’S FATHER [on phone]:

[Speaking Spanish] And why are you wearing that Sunday shirt?

ROBERTO’S MOTHER [on phone]:

[Speaking Spanish] I think the shirt looks great on him.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] [Laughs] Hi, Mom. No, it’s because they are filming me here because the extradition authorization just came out.

ROBERTO’S FATHER [on phone]:

[Speaking Spanish] OK, and are there any more appeals?

Caracas, Venezuela

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] Those few hours before Saab’s extradition were some of the worst for me.

MALE NEWSREADER:

[Speaking Spanish] Just days before the extradition of Alex Saab to the United States—a man said to be a front for Nicolás Maduro—Venezuelan authorities raided the house of Roberto Deniz, a Venezuelan journalist. He is known for his reporting on Saab’s various corruption scandals.

FEMALE REPORTER:

[Speaking Spanish] Right now what we are showing you is the raid on the house of the journalist Roberto Deniz. He’s not in currently in Venezuela but we know some of his family does live in this residence here in Caracas.

RADIO INTERVIEWER:

[Speaking Spanish] It is 6:54 p.m. and we are speaking with Roberto Deniz, journalist at Armando.info. In the last few hours his parents’ house has been raided. Clearly, this is harassment from Nicolás Maduro’s regime.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] Well, it’s totally crazy. It doesn’t make sense because I’m not there and my family members are not responsible for my reporting. Basically, it’s an act of harassment, bullying, and in a way, revenge for all the work we have done over the years related to the case of Alex Saab.

RADIO INTERVIEWER:

[Speaking Spanish] Roberto, thank you for being with us, and we hope the situation in your country improves.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] OK, thanks for having me.

RADIO INTERVIEWER:

[Speaking Spanish] It is 6:58 p.m.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] The worst part of exile is obviously being far from family. I know that my work has taken a toll on my family. Obviously, I understand that. Is it worth it? I don’t know. Yes, the work had its impact, but at the end of the day you feel guilty. Your work caused this, you know?

October 16, 2021

FEMALE NEWSREADER:

[Speaking Spanish] Handcuffed and in custody: That’s how the presumed front man of the president of Venezuela, Alex Saab, first stepped onto U.S. soil. He was extradited from Cape Verde after a year in custody and faces charges of conspiracy and money laundering in a Miami courtroom.

GERARDO REYES, Director, Univision Investigative Unit:

[Speaking Spanish] This court holds the criminal memory of Latin America. Narcos, corrupt people and money launderers have been here. Their stories live in the archives of this building. Lost stories that nobody would hear otherwise. Now, the details can be known.

February 16, 2022

Pre-Trial Hearing

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] There was a hearing before the judge. The judge asked the press to leave the courtroom.

JOSHUA GOODMAN, The Associated Press:

It’s not unheard of in criminal cases for a judge to, what they call, “seal the courtroom.” I kind of was suspicious that something big had taken place in that closed proceeding. But it was really hard to know.

As soon as I start to walk back into the courtroom, I see there’s an angry exchange going on between Saab’s attorney and the judge. And the defense attorney is telling the judge, “You’re making a big mistake.” The judge was really upset and said, “Everything that was previously discussed in the sealed courtroom is now on the record.” Like an hour later, I get a rushed copy of the transcript. My conception of Alex Saab completely changed.

This is the transcript I requested of the closed courtroom proceedings. So in this transcript, Saab’s attorney is very carefully trying to argue to protect some of the documents in the case. The judge in the case orders the unsealing of two docket entries: number 25 and 26. And Alex Saab’s attorney objects. He says, “I don’t need to tell Your Honor that this is a unique case. This is not an instance where another defendant is concerned about retaliation from a drug trafficking organization. We are dealing with something vastly more powerful and vastly greater reach. If the Venezuelan government finds out the extent of what this individual has provided, I have no doubt that there will be retaliation against his wife and his children. Please, Your Honor, do not unseal 25 and 26.”

And the judge basically ignores that and says, “I’ve already heard from you, OK? I gave you a full hearing. I made my ruling. Let’s go.” And that’s when we walk into the courtroom and learn the bombshell news that Alex Saab wasn’t a Venezuelan diplomat. He was actually a DEA informant.

It’s there in black and white explaining how for months he was a DEA informant, sharing information about corruption inside the highest reaches of the Maduro government. He was someone who was playing both sides.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] This is the document that reveals the conversations Alex Saab had with the DEA.

JOSHUA GOODMAN:

On page 4 here it says, “On Aug. 8 and Aug. 10, 2016, Saab Morán, represented by criminal counsel in the United States and his Colombian lawyer, met with special agents for the DEA and the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Bogotá, Colombia. During these meetings Saab Morán was debriefed and provided information relating to certain of his companies that contracted with the government of Venezuela to build low-income housing, including how those companies were paid in connection with the contracts and how the money flowed after his companies received the funds.”

“On Nov. 28, 2017, Saab Morán met with special agents from the DEA and an assistant U.S. attorney for another debriefing.”

MICHAEL NADLER, Asst. U.S. Attorney (2011-2020):

Alex Saab, in a way, thought he was the smartest person in the room. He thought he could get away with telling you what he thought you wanted to hear and eventually realized that wasn’t going to work.

During these meetings, Alex Saab made it clear to us that he was directly connected and had first-person access to Nicolás Maduro, that he was providing a kickback to Maduro and other high-level Venezuelans and had control and access of their accounts and where the money was going.

The scheme he was doing for his low-income housing was paying bribes to customs officials to allow one importation of goods to be counted and submitted 10, 15, 20 different times.

He was not only doing low-income housing, but the CLAP program, getting items that were subpar products. And Alex was getting those contracts, making a significant profit and giving a kickback to Maduro.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] Saab Morán admitted to the U.S. that he had bribed Venezuelan officials related to contracts that he won for importing food to Venezuela.

MICHAEL NADLER:

Alex Saab would take 50 cents of every dollar he earned in those deals and he would essentially earmark it and put it into accounts that were for the benefit of or owned by Nicolás Maduro and in small parts Tareck El Aissami.

JUAN RAVELL, Director:

How can you prove that Maduro was getting Saab’s money?

MICHAEL NADLER:

Alex told us. Alex Saab told us.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] On June 27, 2018, Saab Morán signed a cooperating source agreement with the DEA and became an active law enforcement source.

MICHAEL NADLER:

He was signed up as what’s called a confidential source. He provided corroborated information that allowed us to establish that he was being credible.

GERARDO REYES:

[Speaking Spanish] In his negotiations with the U.S. government, Alex Saab not only shared information but also forfeited around $10 million. This was money earned in the corrupt acts he was being accused of. They agreed on a date for Saab to turn himself in, but Saab never showed up.

MICHAEL NADLER:

The moment Alex Saab did not show up on that deadline, we decided to move forward to charge him with money laundering.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] It’s hard to know if Maduro knew about Saab’s contact with the DEA and the FBI. It’s interesting because for all Maduro has said in favor of Alex Saab, he’s never said anything about this topic.

MICHAEL NADLER:

I do not believe Nicolás Maduro knew that Alex Saab was meeting with us at the time.

GERARDO REYES:

[Speaking Spanish] Why would Maduro continue supporting Saab, making him out to be a hero and bring him home knowing he was a snitch for the U.S.?

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] I just met with a source who is very close to the investigation. I asked the source what they think about Saab’s options.

Their opinion is there is no way that Alex Saab won’t be convicted. They think he’ll do the full 20 years. Or he’ll negotiate some deal. But the source doubts he’ll be able to negotiate because his wife is still in Caracas. And his son Shadi is in Caracas. He didn’t say it specifically, but he thinks they are not in a safe place, and even less safe if he starts cooperating.

JUAN RAVELL:

[Speaking Spanish] So Alex Saab has to choose between 20 years in prison or something happening to his family.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] That was essentially the gist of the conversation, yes.

Caracas, Venezuela

MALE PROTESTER:

[Speaking Spanish] We will never leave Alex Saab behind. Camilla can count on us.

CAMILLA FABRI, Wife of Alex Saab:

[Speaking Spanish] We are, and have always been, a very united family. And like he is a prisoner, we are also prisoners, as his family. But like him, we will continue bravely and calmly as we fight for dignity for all people of the world. For Venezuela and the legitimate government of Nicolás Maduro.

NICOLÁS MADURO:

[Speaking Spanish] Camilla Saab is the hope for a better future. She represents loyalty of our revolutionary cause to one great man: Alex Saab. A great man who has given everything and still gives everything for our fatherland.

JOSHUA GOODMAN:

I don’t know if Maduro wants Alex Saab back. He says he does. But how much of that is just a ruse to rally his base and to use as leverage in negotiations with the United States? It’s possible that he wants him back and he’ll receive them like a hero. But I can also imagine, look what happened to Alex Saab’s partner, Álvaro Pulido. He’s now in jail.

MALE NEWSREADER:

[Speaking Spanish] Nicolás Maduro’s government has confirmed the detention of Álvaro Pulido, Alex Saab’s closest business partner.

FEMALE NEWSREADER:

[Speaking Spanish] Corruption in the Venezuelan state oil company, PDVSA, reached Tareck El Aissami, the Venezuelan oil minister . . .

JOSHUA GOODMAN:

The irony is that Álvaro Pulido is in jail in Venezuela for corrupt oil deals, and yet Maduro keeps fighting for his partner, Alex Saab, to be released from a U.S. prison.

By 2023, Maduro was holding many, many imprisoned Americans, people considered wrongfully detained. And Maduro saw this as an opportunity. People said he viewed them as political pawns in the negotiation with the Biden administration. And their first ask was for Alex Saab to be returned.

December 19, 2023

ROBERTO’S MOTHER [on phone]:

[Speaking Spanish] Hi, Roberto.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] Hi, Mom, how are you?

ROBERTO’S MOTHER [on phone]:

[Speaking Spanish] Good, and you?

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] Fine, good.

ROBERTO’S MOTHER [on phone]:

[Speaking Spanish] What are you up to? Very busy?

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] Yes, well, I’m just standing by for news. [Laughs]

ROBERTO’S FATHER [on phone]:

[Speaking Spanish] But the rumors haven’t been confirmed, have they?

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] Hi, Dad.

ROBERTO’S MOTHER:

[Speaking Spanish] Have they?

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] No, nothing official, yet. But there is lots of evidence that it’s going to happen.

ROBERTO’S FATHER:

[Speaking Spanish] OK. Hang in there.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] There wasn’t much progress on Saab’s case in the past weeks. It seemed the federal court case was on pause and a new negotiation was coming together.

VIII. The Swap

MALE VOICE [on phone]:

This is a huge scoop, Josh, you don’t need me to tell you that. This is a good get. So the White House is no longer denying this, they’re just saying don’t report it yet.

JOSHUA GOODMAN:

I’ve heard it from Saab’s advocates for sure, but from U.S. officials, similar to the people that you’ve been talking to, I had never heard anything like this. I never saw this coming.

There’s always been the Saab narrative that a swap was in the cards, and yet all the Americans being released pale in comparison to the amount of money and man-hours that the U.S. government spent prosecuting one guy who they think is the bagman for Nicolás Maduro.

It’s going to happen tomorrow, I’m pretty sure. I don’t know what time, but I think it’s going to happen.

December 20, 2023

JOSHUA GOODMAN:

Good morning. What’s going on? Oh, wow. He’s confirmed in the air? OK, but he’s out of the country. He left the United States. Yeah, I’ve been at the airport since 7. Nope. Maybe I got here too late. OK, thanks. Bye. Let’s get the f—— story out!

“Biden administration releases from jail key ally of Venezuela’s Maduro in swap for imprisoned Americans. This secretly negotiated deal for an allegedly corrupt businessman once held up as a U.S. trophy is bound to anger Venezuela’s opposition.” I’m going to publish. Ready? Posted. Boom.

You know, this will leave a lot of people angry. Venezuelans, people in the Justice Department. A lot of people are going to think this sets a bad precedent.

JUAN RAVELL:

How do you think Roberto’s feeling?

JOSHUA GOODMAN:

Uh, bad, because he can’t go home and this guy is going home. So yeah, I think he’s probably pretty pissed.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] Look, he’s arriving.

FEMALE NEWSREADER:

[Speaking Spanish] . . . a man who never surrendered. A man who never gave up on his principles. A man who wouldn’t bow down, as his wife said, who, for all these years, has led this campaign together with the government of Venezuela to bring about this moment, and this image that you see now brought to you by Telesur. There he is. There is Alex Saab. He’s hugging his wife again and his daughters. Here now is a deep hug with the First Lady, Cilia Flores. She has been waiting here for Alex Saab’s arrival.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] It’s notable that Cilia Flores is there to receive him. Because if there are two people who know about and have benefitted from Saab’s businesses in Venezuela they are Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores, his wife.

The swap with Alex Saab is not just for detained Americans but also some Venezuelan political prisoners.

MALE NEWSREADER:

Now the other major news this Wednesday night, the high-stakes prisoner swap between the U.S. tonight and Venezuela.

FEMALE NEWSREADER:

Ten Americans, including several the U.S. considered wrongfully detained, were released from that South American country today.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] I think Chavism, with its autocratic tendencies, has realized that by jailing people, Americans and Venezuelans, it can use them like a savings account. You accumulate prisoners till you need them to retrieve the ultimate prize for Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores.

ALEX SAAB:

[Speaking Spanish] I thought you were going to leave me there.

NICOLÁS MADURO:

[Speaking Spanish] Never. Not in this life or in all the lives that come after this one.

ALEX SAAB:

[Speaking Spanish] Thank you, Mr. President. Life is a constant miracle. Thank you to the people of Venezuela. I feel proud to serve you. And to serve this government. A humane government. A loyal government. A government that doesn’t abandon. And a government, that, like me never gives up. And a population that will never give up either. We will always be victorious. Thank you, Mr. President.

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN:

We’ve secured the release of every American being held in Venezuela.

JOSHUA GOODMAN:

I think what Biden saw was an opportunity to try something new, to reengage with Maduro, to talk about elections, to talk about sanctions, to talk about immigration.

JOE BIDEN:

In addition to that, Venezuela thus far is keeping their commitment toward a democratic election.

JOSHUA GOODMAN:

For Maduro, very clearly, he wasn’t going to engage with the U.S. either, unless he got what he wanted, which was Alex Saab.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] Believing that handing over Alex Saab guarantees democratic elections in Venezuela next year is, at the very least, naïve. You are sending him back and all you are getting is a promise?

IX. The Election

Maduro Campaign Rally, 2024

NICOLÁS MADURO:

[Speaking Spanish] They couldn’t defeat us. They never will. And on Sunday, we will show them why . . .

FEMALE NEWSREADER:

The authoritarian regime of Nicolás Maduro is facing one of its toughest challenges in years.

FEMALE NEWSREADER:

If the polls are correct, the vote could mark the end of President Nicolás Maduro’s 11-year grip on power of the crisis-stricken country.

JOSHUA GOODMAN:

The 2024 elections by far were the most consequential that we’ve seen in 25 years of single-party rule in Venezuela. The Venezuelan opposition knew what was at stake. They felt that this was their last chance to save their democracy. They organized effectively around a common purpose to defeat Maduro.

MARIA MACHADO:

[Speaking Spanish] We are going to win!

NICOLÁS MADURO:

[Speaking Spanish] If we don’t want a bloodbath in Venezuela, or a fratricidal civil war caused by the fascists, let’s ensure the greatest success . . .

July 28, 2024

Election Day

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] For many years, Venezuelans have believed we were always at a turning point. But if any moment was really a turning point, that was on July 28, 2024.

A sort of silent hope was emerging. A sense that this was the defining decisive day to bring about political change in Venezuela. That was evident from the very first minute of the day. Those images of people arriving at polling stations in the early hours of the morning were an indication of where things were heading.

MALE NEWSREADER:

Polls have started to close in Venezuela in what’s being seen as the most consequential presidential election in more than a decade.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] At midnight on July 28, the president of the National Electoral Council announced a result and declared Nicolás Maduro the winner.

MALE SPEAKER:

[Speaking Spanish] Nicolás Maduro Moros, 51.20%.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] This result did not align with the evidence gathered by the opposition from the records of the voting machines used that day.

MALE NEWSREADER:

Nicolás Maduro claimed victory in Sunday’s election. Polling shows that’s not what happened.

FEMALE NEWSREADER:

Tally sheets collected by the opposition show challenger Edmundo Gonzales likely beat Maduro by millions.

FEMALE NEWSREADER:

Maduro disputing that, claiming he won by more than a million votes.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] There were protests almost all over the country.

JOSHUA GOODMAN:

Maduro had his security forces on the street, arresting protesters, instilling fear in the population, filling the jails, trying to stamp out any criticism.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] Several of the articles we published about the events that unfolded after July 28 appeared without the bylines of the journalists who worked on them.

JOSHUA GOODMAN:

Before the elections there were about 250, 300 political prisoners in jail. That skyrocketed right after the election. Within a week it was over 2,000. That’s the Venezuela of today. It’s a country marked by fear of speaking out against Maduro.

MALE SPEAKER:

[Speaking Spanish] You are now the constitutional president of Venezuela.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] Maduro certainly consolidated his power. And there, by his side, in his inner circle, we can see Alex Saab.

Maduro received him as a hero, gave him public posts and continues to give him extensive economic decision-making powers. Nicolás Maduro—at least at this stage—seems to be sending the message that “Alex Saab is a man I continue to trust.”

NICOLÁS MADURO:

[Speaking Spanish] What do you, the minister of industry and president of Center for Investments, have to day?

ALEX SAAB:

[Speaking Spanish] Thank you, Mr. President. . . .

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] In the past, Alex Saab benefited from political power. Now, he himself is a political power as decided by Nicolás Maduro.

JOSHUA GOODMAN:

When Biden returned Saab to Venezuela, the immediate goal was to get Americans in prison in Venezuela back home with their families. Maduro, since Saab returned to Venezuela in December of 2023, has arrested 10 more Americans.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] When you look at the full story of Alex Saab and relate it to what has happened in Venezuela, it explains how Maduro’s regime remains in power.

Alex Saab is a tool Nicolás Maduro finds useful for forging alliances with other autocratic regimes such as Russia, China or Iran, which enable him to defy the international community and take measures that help him cling to power. And I think, sadly, this whole story, which perhaps culminates in this image of Nicolás Maduro swearing himself in, summarizes everything they are willing to do to hold on to power. That is their sole objective.

JUAN RAVELL:

[Speaking Spanish] Will you continue investigating Saab?

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] I will definitely keep on investigating this case. Even if it means I can never return to Venezuela. It’s a decision I made a long time ago, and I still believe it’s the right one.

On January 31, Maduro released six American prisoners after meeting with a U.S. envoy.

He hailed it as a “new beginning” with the United States.

A DANGEROUS ASSIGNMENT May 14, 2024

JUAN RAVELL, Director:

[Speaking Spanish] Has this investigation been worth it?

ROBERTO DENIZ, Armando.info:

[Speaking Spanish] Professionally, I always say it’s been worth it.

JUAN RAVELL:

[Speaking Spanish] And personally?

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] That answer is more complicated.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] It’s like I’ve always said and repeated many times, it would have been easier to look away. Perhaps easier and more sane.

I didn’t know who I was investigating. I didn’t understand all the connections I would find, or the sheer size of the operation. What happens, in a regime like Venezuela, when journalism dares to investigate someone so powerful?

JORGE RAMOS:

[Speaking Spanish] Our next guest has been covering Alex Saab for years. Roberto Deniz is a reporter for the website Armando.info and he is wanted by the Venezuelan government for his reporting.

FEMALE NEWSREADER:

[Speaking Spanish] And now, the investigations . . . about Colombian businessman Alex Saab.

FEMALE NEWSREADER:

[Speaking Spanish] One of Interpol’s most wanted fugitives, Alex Saab, was captured on the African island of Cape Verde.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] Do you know anything about a businessman who was captured here? A representative of the Venezuelan government?

TAXI DRIVER:

[Speaking Spanish] You’re talking about Alex Saab. They arrested him here.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] Alex Saab’s story shows us how a regime maintains power.

MARSHALL BILLINGSLEA, Asst. Sec. U.S. Dept. of Treasury (2017-21):

This is story of corruption, of kleptocracy, on a scale that the world has not seen.

JORGE RAMOS:

[Speaking Spanish] What does Alex Saab know about the dictator Nicolás Maduro? Why are they so afraid of him talking?

JOSHUA GOODMAN, The Associated Press:

Alex Saab is ultimately a chameleon. To some people he is a revolutionary; to others he’s a spy. He’s loyal to Maduro. He’s a traitor.

NICOLÁS MADURO, President of Venezuela:

[Speaking Spanish] Who ordered the kidnapping of Alex Saab and took him to the United States?

GERARDO REYES, Director, Univision Investigative Unit:

[Speaking Spanish] Why does Maduro keep defending Saab if he knows he was a snitch for the U.S. government?

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] There are a lot of things in the story that we still don’t know.

Los Andes University

Bogotá, Colombia

FEMALE PROFESSOR:

[Speaking Spanish] Today we’re talking about covering the powerful in this master’s degree journalism class. Roberto Deniz is here to talk about his investigation into the Venezuelan government and allegedly corrupt contractors. It’s a very interesting case because of the costs that journalists pay when they cover a case like this one. Roberto is here and you can ask him questions. Ready? Welcome.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] Thank you very much. As you well know, in 2013 Hugo Chávez died in Venezuela.

Chávez’s Funeral, 2013

NICOLÁS MADURO:

[Speaking Spanish] ’Till we reach victory, Commander.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] There is a bumpy political transition to say the least. Nicolás Maduro is elected president.

NICOLÁS MADURO:

[Speaking Spanish] . . . he saved us from slander, from infamy, from evil, and he died undefeated. Pure. Transparent. Unique. Truthful. Alive. For always. From now until always. They could never bring you down, Commander. And they will never bring us down. Never.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] If you look at the timeline, as soon as he arrived in power Maduro’s only priority was preserving the revolution. An economic crisis had been brewing in the country and it turns out to be enormous. It was a product of years of economic mismanagement. For many years, during the oil boom, the Venezuelan state came to depend on imported food. Oil prices fell, and there was a huge fiscal deficit. It was the perfect storm and caused massive shortages on a scale never-before seen in the country.

Caracas, Venezuela

WOMAN 1 ON FOOD LINE:

[Speaking Spanish] Maduro, there’s no food. There is nothing.

WOMAN 2 ON FOOD LINE:

[Speaking Spanish] We’ve been here since 4:00 a.m.

WOMAN 3 ON FOOD LINE:

[Speaking Spanish] Tell him that we’ve had enough. We’re tired of all the lines.

WOMAN PROTESTER:

[Speaking Spanish] This is every day we come to protest. Enough of this.

NICOLÁS MADURO:

[Speaking Spanish] Oh, my God! What’s going to happen? What happens in Venezuela is what we make happen. Because in Venezuela the revolution calls the shots. Now we’re beginning a new economic revolution in the Venezuelan food economy. I’m announcing the birth of a new national program, “The Local Committees for Supply and Production,” the “CLAP” program.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] The CLAP program is officially born in March of 2016. The CLAP boxes contained products of everyday Venezuelan consumption.

FEMALE NEWSREADER:

[Speaking Spanish] The program distributes a total of 25,000 tons of food for more than a million Venezuelan families.

NICOLÁS MADURO:

[Speaking Spanish] We must go house to house to deliver love. Food is coming house to house and home to home. CLAP is not just boxes and bags, damn it. CLAP is love in action. The CLAP program is empowering our people . . .

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] The CLAP program arrived in our newsroom for simple journalistic curiosity. Armando.info is a site exclusively dedicated to investigative journalism in a country defined by corruption.

NICOLÁS MADURO:

[Speaking Spanish] CLAP products are of the highest quality in our country and in the world. Am I lying?

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] The public discourse about what CLAP was going to be did not square with reality. It was something we had to look into.

I. Bad Milk

TWITTER VIDEO:

[Speaking Spanish] I want to show this so that we all see what we’re drinking. At the bottom it’s like sand. You don’t even know what it is.

TWITTER VIDEO:

[Speaking Spanish] While making the milk, look at what we found. I don’t know what kind of poison they’re giving us Venezuelans.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] Complaints from mothers saying the CLAP products were terrible quality were becoming more and more frequent. Especially the powdered milk.

PATRICIA MARCANO, Armando.info:

[Speaking Spanish] There were a lot of complaints on social media. They said it tasted salty. It settled and made a thick mass in the bottom of the bowl or pitcher.

TWITTER VIDEO:

[Speaking Spanish] When we went to drink our coffee and milk—it’s still hot—imagine our surprise to find the coffee was set like this.

PATRICIA MARCANO:

[Speaking Spanish] They [children] started getting stomach aches, diarrhea even. Adults reported they felt an abdominal distention.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] All of us at Armando.info, but especially Patricia and I, decided to find a methodology to determine if the powdered milk was indeed powdered milk. There was no pattern as to which products, or which brands, were used in the boxes.

PATRICIA MARCANO:

[Speaking Spanish] We chose eight powdered milk brands from CLAP boxes—

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] —and took them to the Central University of Venezuela to do a physical and chemical analysis.

PATRICIA MARCANO:

[Speaking Spanish] They sent us an initial packet of results.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] The results were just tables with numbers. We didn’t understand anything.

PATRICIA MARCANO:

[Speaking Spanish] We needed someone to help us interpret these results.

PABLO HERNÁNDEZ, Nutrition specialist, Central University of Venezuela:

[Speaking Spanish] If you ask me if these products are milk, the answer is plainly, no. As a researcher, I am outraged with these results. They are deceiving the consumer by saying that this is fortified with calcium. When we look at the analysis there are significant differences with the printed nutrition facts.

When you look at a product high in carbohydrates and very low in calcium you can’t call it milk. Nutritionally speaking, it is closer to rice flour. A very small child who consumes this type of milk doesn’t have a renal system that is developed enough to handle those high levels of sodium. We are looking at an important case of food fraud.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] Venezuelan and Mexican authorities eventually conceded there were problems with some of the CLAP products.

We needed to find out who was behind the importation of these products. When you looked at the products in the CLAP box you noticed that they were mostly imported products. So at an assignment meeting, I volunteered to investigate.

Tracking down who is selling food to the government in most countries of the world is a matter of public record. In Venezuela, under Chavism, this type of information is very protected. You can’t find out unless you use alternative sources. One of these sources—someone with deep knowledge of the Venezuelan ports—the source told me, “Roberto . . . I have something you might find interesting.”

These are some of the documents the source gave me in a restaurant in Caracas. There were invoices for the products in the CLAP boxes sold by a company called Group Grand Limited. On the letterhead there’s an address in Hong Kong. The invoices were made out to a subsidiary of the Ministry of Food Supply. They confirmed that this company was involved in the CLAP business. So we have a business registered in Hong Kong that buys food in Mexico and sells it to the Venezuelan government. The only thing I knew for sure was they were hiding someone.

So I went looking in the Hong Kong business registry. And I found that one of the company’s directors was named Shadi Saab. And despite Group Grand Limited being registered in Hong Kong, there was also an address in Caracas.

Avenue Francisco de Miranda Centro Galipan, etc.

I go to this office in Caracas. I walk up to the security desk and I say I’m going to the office for Group Grand Limited. They tell me the office isn’t there. Because that office belonged to Fondo Global de Construcción.

FONDO GLOBAL DE CONSTRUCCIÓN PROMOTIONAL VIDEO:

[Speaking Spanish] Fondo Global de Construcción. We are a business leader in infrastructure . . .

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] Fondo Global de Construcción was already known to Armando.info from a previous investigation. As soon as I saw the name, I was like, “Boom.”

It was obvious that who ran the company wasn’t Shadi Saab. It was his father, Alex Saab.

MALE NEWSREADER:

[Speaking Spanish] Within the framework of the great housing mission for Columbia, Alex Saab, legal representative of Fondo Global de Construcción.

II. Saab’s Story

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] At the end of 2011, Alex Saab arrived in Venezuela with a newly registered business and started getting multimillion-dollar contracts to build public housing. This was an area in which he had no experience.

Carabobo, Venezuela

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] Fondo Global de Construcción obtained contracts to build about 2,500 apartments in the state of Carabobo, but they didn’t even finish 100 of the apartments. That’s less than 4% of the total contract. Half-finished buildings were just abandoned. There are still people today waiting for those apartments to be built.

This new information helped us understand Alex Saab wasn’t just in the construction business. But from 2015 until 2017, he became Maduro’s favorite contractor. Any economic program Maduro wanted to run, Alex Saab was the person he asked to run it. And the most emblematic example is the CLAP program.

We still don’t know why Saab became Maduro’s favorite contractor. But his fingerprints were all over the place, including Group Grand Limited. What our stories revealed is that Alex Saab, a longtime contractor for the Venezuelan government, was now the biggest contractor for the CLAP program and the man Maduro trusted most to import food for the state.

The first big CLAP contract given to Alex Saab was for $340 million USD for 10 million boxes. That’s $34 per box. When these poor-quality products that they were buying cost less than $20 per box on the market.

When we published the story we put a target on our backs. We knew this could easily become personal.

One day I was leaving my house and I see two officials from the Venezuelan Judicial Police who said they are there to give me a document. The surprise came when I looked at the papers and I saw Alex Saab’s name in a lawsuit against me and Armando.info’s editors. He was suing me for continued aggravated defamation and injury.

In the lawsuit, Saab denied the facts of our reporting. And later, he denied any connection with the CLAP business.

From the moment I saw the lawsuit it was very clear to me that this was an attempt to intimidate us. The message was either be quiet or get ready for the consequences.

In Venezuela, lawsuits like this can result in criminal convictions and multi-year prison sentences for journalists. One of the things that often happens to journalists is you can be punished pre-trial either by prohibiting you from leaving the country or by annulling your passport or something else. Obviously, the risk of staying in Venezuela and continuing to publish about Alex Saab was enormous. Finally, the editors of Armando.info and I decided to leave the country. I believe, to this day, that it was the right decision. That our best defense was to continue investigating the story.

Bogotá, Colombia

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] My first concern about moving to another country was how I would continue the investigation. And the moment we left Venezuela was the same moment we realized there was a lot of interest in Alex Saab outside of Venezuela.

Miami, Florida

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] At the same time I was doing my reporting, other journalists were also investigating Alex Saab because of all the scandal related to his work at Fondo Global de Construcción and the unfinished houses. One of those journalists is Gerardo Reyes, who works in Miami. He discovered some important things for the investigation.

GERARDO REYES:

[Speaking Spanish] Among journalists we started hearing Alex Saab’s name more frequently coming up in Venezuela. I started looking into Saab and his associates in Venezuela. I wanted to find out how, with almost no reputation, they had risen to such heights within the political establishment of Venezuela. How he did it is quite impressive. Because a man with nothing, who had lost everything, had become one of the most powerful men within the Maduro regime.

Alex Saab was born into a Lebanese immigrant family in Barranquilla, Colombia, where he opened his own textile business in the mid-’90s. But the businesses didn’t go very well. And this is an important point. Barranquilla is a city that celebrates its citizens’ triumphs very loudly. But it’s also very severe with the ones that fail. And Saab was no exception to that rule of prestige, success. For him it was very important how Barranquilla’s elite society regarded his successes and his failures. Alex Saab was broke until he realized his future was in Venezuela.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] While he was still in Colombia, Alex Saab met former Colombian Senator Piedad Cordoba, who would be the key figure for Saab to access big contracts with the Venezuelan government.

But even more importantly, he also met the man who became his business partner in Venezuela: Álvaro Pulido. Since signing the first Fondo Global de Construcción contract in Venezuela, Alex Saab and Álvaro Pulido did all their business together.

III. The Perfect Partner

GERARDO REYES:

[Speaking Spanish] I started looking into Álvaro Pulido’s life and I discover he had a very dark past. I figured out that using the Miami consulate he fraudulently changed his identity. His name wasn’t Álvaro Pulido. His name was Germán Rubio Salas. And he was the leader of a very efficient drug trafficking and money laundering cartel with operations in Europe.

Bogotá, May 2000

MALE LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICER:

[Speaking Spanish] Germán Enrique Rubio Salas is the leader of this criminal organization. He has criminal records and is also wanted for drug trafficking in Germany and Italy. He faces a 15-year prison sentence in Italy and an extradition order from Milan.

GERARDO REYES:

[Speaking Spanish] After his arrest he served more than five years in prison. Once he’s out, he reinvents himself and starts to build himself a new life.

So here should be the death of . . . Pulido! It is this dead man’s name that Germán Rubio takes to start his new life in Venezuela.

But what finally convinced me of Pulido’s deception was that when I approached him for an interview so he could explain the name change, he promised to send me an official explanation, and I’m still waiting for it today.

Pulido, as a convicted drug trafficker, brought his experience creating shell companies and laundering money to all his business dealings with Saab.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] Pulido is like the mastermind behind the financial operations. He would create the companies that allow them to hide money. And Alex Saab was the face of the operation, especially for politicians and connections.

GERARDO REYES:

[Speaking Spanish] Saab left Barranquilla deep in debt and returned with a new model wife, moved into the same building as Shakira and now he starts living the good life.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] Alex Saab builds himself a very luxurious mansion in Barranquilla. He starts using an impressive collection of private jets. He buys an apartment in Via Condotti, one of Rome’s most expensive streets. And he rents a big mansion in Beverly Hills, for his son Shadi to live in while he tries to become an actor in Hollywood. Alex Saab starts showing up as executive producer on one of Shadi’s films.

This was all happening while Shadi was listed as a director of Group Grand Limited, the company importing poor-quality milk.

Shadi Saab, Alex Saab’s son

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] An interesting element of Shadi’s short-lived career as an aspiring actor is that in the pilot for a TV show called “King of LA” he plays the role of the son of a gangster who is a Colombian drug trafficker.

“King of LA”

MALE ACTOR:

I was born in the same village as your father, man. I love your father. He was a great man. He is a great man, he’s a great man.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] As the Saabs’ Hollywood connections grew, Shadi had a small role in a movie called “All-Star Weekend,” starring and directed by, Jamie Foxx. The film was finished, but it was never released.

Earlier when Jamie Foxx was invited by Maduro for a surprise visit to Miraflores, the presidential palace in Venezuela, Alex Saab was there.

FEMALE REPORTER:

[Speaking Spanish] . . . the Oscar-winner visits Miraflores Palace . . .

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] Visits from American celebrities were important to Maduro and his image. And it’s interesting that Saab was at such a high-profile event.

Miami, Florida

JOSHUA GOODMAN:

Alex Saab began to appear on my radar around 2016, 2017, when some local journalists, Amando.info, Roberto Deniz, started reporting about these lucrative food contracts that he had signed with the Venezuelan government. Everyone was trying to figure out, “Who is this guy? Why is he so important to the Venezuelan government?” The United States started asking these same questions and he became a target of U.S. law enforcement.

Maduro’s reelection in 2018 is a turning point. That’s when the U.S. determines that Venezuela has taken a turn towards a dictatorship. So 2018, 2019 especially, the U.S. really ratchets up the pressure on Venezuela with sanctions.

January 28, 2019

STEVEN MNUCHIN:

Thank you. Today Treasury took action against Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, PDVSA, to help prevent the further diversion of Venezuela’s assets by Maduro, and will preserve these assets for the people of Venezuela where they belong.

JOSHUA GOODMAN:

When the U.S. slapped sanctions on Venezuela, Alex Saab hit a jackpot. The country didn’t stop doing business. They still have tons of oil. They need to get it out of the country. Alex Saab sees an opportunity, and he became their go-to person for getting around the sanctions. The U.S. determines that Alex Saab is the critical linchpin keeping the Maduro government afloat. There was a clear determination that Nicolas Maduro needed to go, and the way to go after him was attacking his money people.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] As Alex Saab began to gain notoriety, other countries begin their own investigations. In Europe, for example, as well as in the U.S. He needed people in Venezuela, ideally people from the opposition parties, to help clear his businesses’ names and improve his reputation abroad to continue doing business. In this moment, the Venezuelan Congress was controlled by the opposition parties, so it was the only legitimate government body in the eyes of the international community.

A source told me that Alex Saab was buying opposition lawmakers. The source was someone very close to one of the legislators involved in this plan.

JUAN RAVELL:

[Speaking Spanish] Do you think this source would talk to us?

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] Maybe. Yes, maybe.

Brooklyn, New York

ROSA GARRIDO, Parliamentary Assistant , Luis Parra (2016-19):

[Speaking Spanish] My name is Rosa Virginia Garrido. I was a parliamentary assistant in Congress. I started working with Luis Parra because he was one of the politicians who wanted political change in Venezuela.

FEMALE NEWSREADER:

[Speaking Spanish] Our guest is Congressman Luis Eduardo Parra, who is a member of the opposition coalition.

ROSA GARRIDO:

[Speaking Spanish] His rhetoric was honest, direct and provocative.

LUIS PARRA:

[Speaking Spanish] . . . but above all, remember, we can topple this dictatorship if we take to the streets until they are removed from power.

We need to call out with a single voice to Nicolás Maduro that he will not find enablers here in Yaracuy.

ROSA GARRIDO:

[Speaking Spanish] But in politics, anything can happen. Anyone can take advantage of a situation. There are no eternal allies nor permanent enemies.

On April 8, 2017, I was covering a march organized by the opposition. And a police officer stole my phone. Days later Luis Parra says to me, “Rosa, you know what? I’m getting a new phone so you can have mine. You need it for your work.” So, Luis gave me his phone. I used it for work and as my personal phone. When he gives me the phone he leaves all the apps open and connected. Mail, Facebook, Instagram, messaging apps . . . So, I saw all his conversations in real time.

One day, I see something new. “Carlos Lizcano: Salva Foods” is added as a contact in Telegram. None other than Alex Saab’s third in command.

Carlos Lizcano, Saab Associate

ROSA GARRIDO:

[Speaking Spanish] Since 2016, they had been denouncing the CLAP program in Congress. What is Carlos Lizcano doing in the contacts of an opposition lawmaker? Absurd. Totally absurd.

I decided to contact Roberto because this was outrageous. So, I told Roberto I’m looking at a Telegram conversation between Luis Parra and Carlos Lizcano. Roberto was dumbstruck. He said, “Do you have any idea what you have in your hands?”

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] All these chats are the step-by-step blueprints of Operation Scorpion, which started with the goal of improving Saab’s business image, but in the end would sow chaos in the Venezuelan opposition to the benefit of Maduro.

IV. Operation Scorpion

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] You can see the familiarity between them because Lizcano greets Parra saying, “How’s it going, brother?”

ROSA GARRIDO:

[Speaking Spanish] Parra responds, “All good, brother, moving ahead.”

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] You could see the whole recruitment process of the other legislators. So Parra, for example, there was a moment they were having lunch, a group of lawmakers, and he sends this picture to Lizcano and he says, “Here I am.”

ROSA GARRIDO:

[Speaking Spanish] He writes, “This was yesterday for the thing.”

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] And Lizcano answers him, “Get moving, buddy.”

ROSA GARRIDO:

[Speaking Spanish] Parra: “Can you give me and my colleague a four-month advance?” He’s saying, “Give me the money. If we don’t get paid, we aren’t moving forward.”

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] They are literally negotiating a transaction. A lawmaker offering services for money.

These same lawmakers organized a secret trip to Europe where the goal was basically to deliver official, signed letters defending Alex Saab’s businesses in various countries saying that the companies had been investigated and there were no irregularities. This trip included a number of countries: Bulgaria, Portugal, Liechtenstein. In each and every one of these countries there was either an open investigation against Saab himself, or one of his companies or frozen assets in an account.

I contacted everyone involved to hear their version. And they denied they were doing anything for Saab or his companies. Luis Parra was the first one I called.

Interview excerpts

LUIS PARRA [on phone]:

[Speaking Spanish] Hello?

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] Hello?

LUIS PARRA [on phone]:

[Speaking Spanish] Good afternoon.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] Yes, Congressman how are you? My name is Roberto Deniz. I work for Armando info . . . Do you know a businessman named Carlos Lizcano, owner of a company called Salva Foods?

LUIS PARRA [on phone]:

[Speaking Spanish] No, brother. I can’t say I know him, no . . .

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] You work together with some other lawmakers who took a trip to Europe . . . and I’ve heard that trip was funded by Alex Saab, directly or indirectly . . .

LUIS PARRA [on phone]:

[Speaking Spanish] Listen, I spend a lot of my own money in my work as a legislator. Now I’m listening to you and thinking, “Look how low the politics of this country have fallen. . . . You start talking about this and I’m here thinking, where do you get funds to run your news portal, by extorting people? . . .

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] I will consider that as your answer.

LUIS PARRA [on phone]:

[Speaking Spanish] Well, brother, consider it whatever you want. It’s what happens when you go to these extremes.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] Well, but . . .

LUIS PARRA [on phone]:

[Speaking Spanish] You are here asking me who I got lunch with.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] I’m not asking about lunch, Congressman. I’m asking you about a trip with two other congressmen. It’s natural to think it was a work-related trip.

LUIS PARRA [on phone]:

[Speaking Spanish] Brother, I could be traveling with five congressmen and 10 prostitutes and I don’t have to tell you anything.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] With the publication of our story what we ended up revealing was the swamp of Venezuelan politics.

MALE REPORTER:

[Speaking Spanish] . . . what we want to know is where did this money come from?

LUIS PARRA:

[Speaking Spanish] The topic of corruption is a very intense subject. We can talk about thousands of different cases. We’re going to investigate and we’ll get to the bottom of this. Armando.info will need to present their proof . . .

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] Some time later, these videos of their European tour were leaked. You see them with full shopping bags.

MALE VOICE:

[Speaking Spanish] [Laughter] You are such a thief.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] You see them counting packs of money.

And the political phase of Operation Scorpion is when this breaks, when we publish our story. Mr. Luis Parra is elected president of the Congress with the help of the Chavist minority there.

FEMALE NEWSREADER:

A faction of supporters loyal to Maduro seized the floor, and by a quick show of hands and no formal vote, they declared a winner.

MALE NEWSREADER:

[Speaking Spanish] Tension at the gates of the Venezuelan Congress.

FEMALE NEWSREADER:

[Speaking Spanish] The Chavists have elected a member of the Primero Justicia party.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] It looked as if the opposition had fractured, that it had been divided between Parra and the internationally recognized opposition leader, Juan Guaido. . . . Maduro made it clear who he supported.

NICOLÁS MADURO:

[Speaking Spanish] Congress has made a decision and there is now new leadership in the opposition led by Congressman Luis Parra.

FEMALE NEWSREADER:

[Speaking Spanish] Luis Parra is not a famous legislator, and until Nov. 1, he supported Juan Guaido.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] People started referring Parra as the leader of “the CLAP faction.” And they would end up being useful to Maduro in the future.

But outside of Venezuela, the pressure on Saab continued to grow, especially in the United States.

JOSHUA GOODMAN:

At the tip of the spear of the U.S. government campaign to go after Alex Saab was the U.S. Justice Department and the U.S. Treasury Department. Marshall Billingslea at Treasury, he was really the point man that I think was pushing the bureaucracy. He had really fixated on this guy and thought that he was Maduro’s bagman and needed to go.

V. USA vs. Saab

MARSHALL BILLINGSLEA, Asst. Sec. U.S. Dept. of Treasury (2017-21):

It was very quickly after the Trump administration came to office and I joined the U.S. Treasury that Alex Saab came to our attention. He’s moved an enormous amount of money from the regime around the world. He’s stolen enormous amounts of money for Maduro and his cronies. Alex Saab was prolific in the way that he created shell companies around the world. It was my role in the Treasury to do everything that I could to help protect the U.S. financial system and to support our friends and our allies. In the case of Alex Saab, this is an individual who is abusing the international financial system. And the things he was doing on behalf of Maduro were unconscionable.

JOSHUA GOODMAN:

The United States has unique jurisdiction over financial crimes because of the strength of the U.S. financial system. Wall Street banks kind of reach everywhere in the world. Even if you’re sending money from Venezuela to, say, Germany, it probably goes through a correspondent bank in New York, and that gives the U.S. prosecutors unique jurisdiction to prosecute wrongdoing. That’s what happened with the case with Alex Saab.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] On July 25, 2019, Alex Saab was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department. That same day, federal prosecutors in Miami indicted him on money laundering charges.

On June 12, 2020, Alex Saab gets on a flight from Caracas destined for Iran to close a business deal, in Maduro’s name, with Iran.

JOSHUA GOODMAN:

His plane could not make it to Iran in one flight. It had to stop somewhere in Africa. The U.S. learns that he’s trying to get landing permission. They locate him in Cape Verde, identify him as Alex Saab and effectuate an arrest based on an unsealed-now U.S. warrant.

FEMALE NEWSREADER:

[Speaking Spanish] One of Interpol’s most wanted fugitives, the Colombian businessman Alex Saab, and the presumed accomplice of Nicolás Maduro in a fraud associated with food imports destined for the poorest citizens of Venezuela, was captured in Cape Verde on the African coast.

MALE NEWSREADER:

[Speaking Spanish] As soon as the United States knew that Interpol had captured Saab they immediately called for his extradition.

Praia, Cape Verde

2021

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] Here is where the Supreme Court publishes news, and we can see here one of the appeals made by Alex Saab’s lawyers to try and nullify his extradition to the United States.

If Alex Saab ends up being extradited to the U.S., it is obviously very bad for the Venezuelan government because for all he has done over the years in Venezuela, he knows things they don’t want out there.

Sal, Cape Verde

JOSHUA GOODMAN:

Venezuela is a petrostate. It depends exclusively on the sale of oil for income. And Alex Saab knows a lot about where all of this money is flowing, whether it’s Russia, Iran, Turkey. It’s Alex Saab who really has the keys to the kingdom in terms of explaining how this government is surviving despite being under incredible international pressure due to U.S. sanctions.

NICOLÁS MADURO:

[Speaking Spanish] A good man was kidnapped, an innocent man, a hard-working man, a man who loves the Venezuelan people.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] I imagined, at this point, that if Saab had been detained it was only a matter of time before he was extradited. But after his arrest we start hearing this version of the story that had never been heard before: that Mr. Alex Saab was a Venezuelan diplomat.

NICOLÁS MADURO:

[Speaking Spanish] The U.S. empire has kidnapped a Venezuelan diplomat, which violates every international law.

JOSHUA GOODMAN:

Maduro’s embrace of Alex Saab is unprecedented. Before his arrest Nicolás Maduro never mentions Alex Saab. He was someone who operated in the shadows. Alex Saab was providing incredibly important services to the Venezuelan government at the time of his arrest. However, he had never, until that moment, been called a Venezuelan diplomat. That changes with his arrest. That became the rallying cry in Caracas to get him out of trouble.

NICOLÁS MADURO:

[Speaking Spanish] This food that was delivered, the imported food from abroad, was brought here by Alex Saab. And he did it because he loves our country.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] Maduro’s government made an official statement defending Alex Saab, released hours after his detention, admitted what they had wanted to hide for years. It admitted Alex Saab was in charge of administering most of the CLAP food imports. When Alex Saab sued me and the editors of Armando.info he denied his connection to the CLAP program. This new statement confirmed all of our investigative reporting about how this man controlled the imports of food as well as medicine and other key businesses.

No. They’re not answering.

MALE VOICE [on phone]:

[Speaking Spanish] Hello?

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] Hello, good afternoon. My name is Roberto Deniz. I’m a reporter and I’d like to speak with you. Do you think we could do an interview?

MALE VOICE [on phone]:

[Speaking Spanish] No, no. I’m not talking about that topic.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] They don’t want to talk either.

FEMALE TELEPHONE OPERATOR:

The number you have dialed is not available.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] I’m seeing that at the administrative level there is a reluctance and a lot of worry about discussing the case. Today, for example, I called the Chief of Police of Cape Verde and the conversation didn’t even last 30 seconds.

JOSHUA GOODMAN:

Alex Saab is a very uncomfortable prisoner for any country, and in Cape Verde they were really caught between a rock and a hard place. The U.S. was asserting enormous amounts of pressure on Cape Verde to hand over this guy. At one point even diverts a Navy warship to the eastern Atlantic Ocean, just sort of to remind everyone that this was a key target of theirs.

FEMALE NEWSREADER:

[Speaking Spanish] Maria Zakharova, the official representative of the Russian Federation’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, has expressed that the United States is using the case against the Venezuelan businessman Alex Saab as a means of putting pressure of Nicolás Maduro.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] Around Alex Saab there was a kind of cold war brewing because, on one side, there were the allies of the Bolivarian Revolution, basically Russia, Iran and China, and on the other side, the United States pursuing Saab. And again, there is this campaign supporting Saab and his supposed diplomatic status.

JOSHUA GOODMAN:

He’s now almost a revolutionary martyr in the eyes of the Maduro government. There’s graffiti, there’s posters, there’s documentaries, there’s poetry. There’s all kinds of homages paid to Alex Saab, which show how critically important he is to Maduro’s survival.

MALE RAPPER:

[Rapping in Spanish] Free Alex Saab. Free Alex Saab. I fell in love with Venezuela and its revolution. In 2015 I began importing food to help stop the crisis.

PRIEST:

[Speaking Spanish] The crime of brother Alex was that he left to bring back food.

ROGER WATERS, Pink Floyd:

Alex, we are with you. And we are solidly with you. And we will stay with you until you are out of prison.

MALE PROTESTER 1 [chanting]:

Free, free Alex Saab. Free, free Alex Saab.

MALE PROTESTER 2:

He is a Venezuelan diplomat who was trying to get medicine and food for his country.

FEMALE SPEAKER:

[Speaking Spanish] From Rome, Italy, I want my voice to be heard. Alex Saab must be freed.

JOSHUA GOODMAN:

And then it also had this darker side where they attacked the journalists who were actually doing real reporting about Alex Saab. People like Roberto Deniz.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] “Here’s how the criminal Roberto Deniz got into Cape Verde with the help of the CIA.” And there’s a whole article here. Here’s a whole series of social media attacks—obviously anonymous accounts that have been used for this campaign against me over the past months. They’re trying to intimidate me and influence my reporting work while I’m here.

“Alex Saab: A Kidnapped Diplomat” film

CAMILLA FABRI, Wife of Alex Saab:

[Speaking Spanish] They didn’t even let me, his wife, in, or the girls. We couldn’t even go to Cape Verde. Who did they let in? This supposed journalist. He’s been trying to defame Alex for years. He’s a journalist who is paid to tell lies. He wants the lies to become reality.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] The information that I have is that even after his detention and house arrest Alex Saab was still running his businesses in Caracas through Álvaro Pulido.

While Saab was detained, a new source contacted me. The source claims to have tons of information about Alex Saab’s businesses and operations in Russia. All of this comes from an office they had in Moscow.

VI. The Russia Office

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] When this new source writes to me they do it from a Russian phone number.

Voice message

ANONYMOUS SOURCE:

[Speaking Spanish] Good evening, Roberto. For my security I will remain anonymous. I’m contacting you because I’ve seen that you have followed the case of Alex Saab very closely. I have lots of valuable information. I have addresses, I have photos, passwords to accounts and much more delicate information as well, but we’ll talk about that in person.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] My first thought was that this could be a trap because it is very unusual that a source shows up out of nowhere and wants to give you this much stuff. With all the attention this case has gotten, I always pump the brakes in situations like this because I don’t know what I am dealing with.

After we exchanged messages for a while I agreed to meet the source. And we met in a hotel in Bogotá.

The most valuable thing the source shared with me was the name of a young Colombian who seems to be running operations of that office in Moscow for the business of Alex Saab and Álvaro Pulido. Her name was Camila Ballen Hernández.

Once I had the information about the office and María Camila Ballen Hernández’s name, obviously I wanted to know who she was. Her name wasn’t on my radar. I found her name popping up associated with a bunch of businesses registered in Russia designed to continue Saab and Pulido’s operations.

She never responded to my attempts to talk to her. With additional reporting, I found out that the Moscow office was fundamentally focussed on the oil business.

Maduro began relying on Saab and Pulido to help avoid sanctions placed by the U.S. Department of the Treasury on the Venezuelan state oil business. This business’s goal was to sell oil without anyone knowing it was coming from Venezuela. The operation was designed by Venezuela’s oil minister, Tareck El Aissami. I imagine that they felt the close relationship between Putin and Maduro’s regimes offered a kind of judicial cover.

But there was a much bigger scandal behind this operation.They never actually paid Venezuela the money for those oil exports.

Shortly after these conversations, I got a leaked internal document from the Venezuelan state oil business, PDVSA, which shows a list of intermediaries that sold Venezuelan oil, but some of them never paid back PDVSA. In this list are many of the businesses connected to Saab and Pulido in countries including Russia and Mexico. These businesses owed Venezuela about $1.5 billion. We’re talking about oil that they exported supposedly to sell, which they did, but they never paid PDVSA for it.

One of the biggest questions in this whole story is why Maduro is so interested in defending Mr. Alex Saab? I think part of it is fear. The fear that people will find out that all the money Alex Saab has made in his businesses—housing, food imports, oil—was money he made for himself, money for him and his people, or was the money also for Nicolás Maduro? It’s a good question.

But I think it would justify the #FreeAlexSaab campaign and the effort to avoid his extradition to the U.S.

VII. The Extradition

MALE NEWSREADER:

[Speaking Spanish] Another piece of breaking news: The Constitutional Tribunal has authorized the extradition of Alex Saab to the United States.

FEMALE NEWSREADER:

[Speaking Spanish] The Constitutional Tribunal has authorized the extradition to the United States of Alex Saab, the alleged front for Nicolás Maduro.

FEMALE NEWSREADER:

[Speaking Spanish] The highest court in the African country denied the appeals of Alex Saab’s lawyers, who had questioned the constitutionality of the legal process since the man accused of being Maduro’s front man was imprisoned more than a year ago.

Bogotá, Colombia

RADIO INTERVIEWER:

[Speaking Spanish] . . . Armando.info, and the person who knows this story best is Roberto Deniz. Roberto, welcome back to the show. Good afternoon.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] Hello, good afternoon, and glad to be with you.

RADIO INTERVIEWER:

[Speaking Spanish] Why is this news important? Is this the final sign that Saab is heading to the United States?

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] Today the Constitutional Tribunal ratified the extradition request, which means all that is left now is to authorize the extradition.

ROBERTO’S FATHER [on phone]:

[Speaking Spanish] Roberto, how are you?

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] Hi, Dad. Good, and you?

ROBERTO’S FATHER [on phone]:

[Speaking Spanish] And why are you wearing that Sunday shirt?

ROBERTO’S MOTHER [on phone]:

[Speaking Spanish] I think the shirt looks great on him.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] [Laughs] Hi. Mom. No, it’s because they are filming me here because the extradition authorization just came out.

ROBERTO’S FATHER [on phone]:

[Speaking Spanish] OK, and are there any more appeals?

Caracas, Venezuela

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] Those few hours before Saab’s extradition were some of the worst for me.

MALE NEWSREADER:

[Speaking Spanish] Just days before the extradition of Alex Saab to the United States—a man said to be a front for Nicolás Maduro—Venezuelan authorities raided the house of Roberto Deniz, a Venezuelan journalist. He is known for his reporting on Saab’s various corruption scandals.

FEMALE REPORTER:

[Speaking Spanish] Right now what we are showing you is the raid on the house of the journalist Roberto Deniz. He’s not in currently in Venezuela but we know some of his family does live in this residence here in Caracas.

RADIO INTERVIEWER:

[Speaking Spanish] It is 6:54 p.m. and we are speaking with Roberto Deniz, journalist at Armando.info. In the last few hours his parents’ house has been raided. Clearly, this is harassment from Nicolás Maduro’s regime.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] Well, it’s totally crazy. It doesn’t make sense because I’m not there and my family members are not responsible for my reporting. Basically, it’s an act of harassment, bullying, and in a way, revenge for all the work we have done over the years related to the case of Alex Saab.

RADIO INTERVIEWER:

[Speaking Spanish] Roberto, thank you for being with us, and we hope the situation in your country improves.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] OK, thanks for having me.

RADIO INTERVIEWER:

[Speaking Spanish] It is 6:58 p.m.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] The worst part of exile is obviously being far from family. I know that my work has taken a toll on my family. Obviously, I understand that. Is it worth it? I don’t know. Yes, the work had its impact, but at the end of the day you feel guilty. Your work caused this, you know?

October 16, 2021

FEMALE NEWSREADER:

[Speaking Spanish] Handcuffed and in custody: that’s how the presumed front man of the president of Venezuela, Alex Saab, first stepped onto U.S. soil. He was extradited from Cape Verde after a year in custody and faces charges of conspiracy and money laundering. His first court appearance is this Monday in Miami.

GERARDO REYES, Director, Univision Investigative Unit:

[Speaking Spanish] This court holds the criminal memory of Latin America. Narcos, corrupt people and money launderers have been here. Their stories live in the archives of this building. Lost stories that nobody would hear otherwise. Now, the details can be known.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] Hi, Joshua, how are you? They said I’m authorized but I don’t know if I have to do anything else?

JOSHUA GOODMAN [on phone]:

[Speaking Spanish] Supposedly, you can come in with your gear, but they’ll check it. OK, I’m parking.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] OK, thanks.

PROTESTERS [chanting]:

Free, free Alex Saab. Free, free Alex Saab. Libertad, Alex Saab. Libertad, Alex Saab. Libertad, Alex Saab.

MALE PROTESTER:

And so what we see here is a direct attempt to try to again bully the country of Venezuela and change the narrative to make it seem as though the people are oppressed. They are oppressed, but by the U.S. government, by the U.S.-backed sanctions.

JOSHUA GOODMAN:

Judge Robert Scola had seen a lot of Venezuela corruption cases by the time Alex Saab walks in his courtroom handcuffed. He was not buying this argument that Saab was a Venezuelan diplomat and he orders a trial.

FEMALE REPORTER:

[Speaking Spanish] Alex Saab has just pleaded not guilty in a Miami courthouse.

FEMALE REPORTER:

[Speaking Spanish] Alex Saab’s lawyer has taken the position that the accused front man of Nicolás Maduro is a Venezuelan diplomat. Saab’s next hearing will be with Judge Roberto Scola, who is overseeing the case.

February 16, 2022

Pre-Trial Hearing

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] There was a hearing before the judge. The judge asked the press to leave the courtroom.

JOSHUA GOODMAN, The Associated Press:

It’s not unheard of in criminal cases for a judge to, what they call, “seal the courtroom.” I kind of was suspicious that something big had taken place in that closed proceeding. But it was really hard to know.

As soon as I start to walk back into the courtroom, I see there’s an angry exchange going on between Saab’s attorney and the judge. And the defense attorney is telling the judge, “You’re making a big mistake.” The judge was really upset and said, “Everything that was previously discussed in the sealed courtroom is now on the record.” Like an hour later, I get a rushed copy of the transcript. My conception of Alex Saab completely changed.

This is the transcript I requested of the closed courtroom proceedings. So in this transcript, Saab’s attorney is very carefully trying to argue to protect some of the documents in the case. The judge in the case orders the unsealing of two docket entries: number 25 and 26. And Alex Saab’s attorney objects. He says, “I don’t need to tell Your Honor that this is a unique case. This is not an instance where another defendant is concerned about retaliation from a drug trafficking organization. We are dealing with something vastly more powerful and vastly greater reach. If the Venezuelan government finds out the extent of what this individual has provided, I have no doubt that there will be retaliation against his wife and his children. Please, Your Honor, do not unseal 25 and 26.”

And the judge basically ignores that and says, “I’ve already heard from you, OK? I gave you a full hearing. I made my ruling. Let’s go.” And that’s when we walk into the courtroom and learn the bombshell news that Alex Saab wasn’t a Venezuelan diplomat. He was actually a DEA informant.

It’s there in black and white explaining how for months he was a DEA informant, sharing information about corruption inside the highest reaches of the Maduro government. He was someone who was playing both sides.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] This is the document that reveals the conversations Alex Saab had with the DEA.

JOSHUA GOODMAN:

On page 4 here it says, “On Aug. 8 and Aug. 10, 2016, Saab Morán, represented by criminal counsel in the United States and his Colombian lawyer, met with special agents for the DEA and the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Bogotá, Colombia. During these meetings Saab Morán was debriefed and provided information relating to certain of his companies that contracted with the government of Venezuela to build low-income housing, including how those companies were paid in connection with the contracts and how the money flowed after his companies received the funds.”

“On Nov. 28, 2017, Saab Moran met with special agents from the DEA and an assistant U.S. attorney for another debriefing.”

MICHAEL NADLER, Asst. U.S. Attorney (2011-2020):

Alex Saab, in a way, thought he was the smartest person in the room. He thought he could get away with telling you what he thought you wanted to hear and eventually realized that wasn’t going to work.

During these meetings, Alex Saab made it clear to us that he was directly connected and had first-person access to Nicolás Maduro, that he was providing a kickback to Maduro and other high-level Venezuelans and had control and access of their accounts and where the money was going.

The scheme he was doing for his low-income housing was paying bribes to customs officials to allow one importation of goods to be counted and submitted 10, 15, 20 different times.

He was not only doing low-income housing, but the CLAP program, getting items that were subpar products. And Alex Saab was getting those contracts, making a significant profit and giving a kickback to Maduro.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] Saab Morán admitted to the U.S. that he had bribed Venezuelan officials related to contracts that he won for importing food to Venezuela.

MICHAEL NADLER:

Alex Saab would take 50 cents of every dollar he earned in those deals and he would essentially earmark it and put it into accounts that were for the benefit of or owned by Nicolás Maduro and in small parts Tareck El Aissami.

JUAN RAVELL, Director:

How can you prove that Maduro was getting Saab’s money?

MICHAEL NADLER:

Alex told us. Alex Saab told us.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] On June 27, 2018, Saab Morán signed a cooperating source agreement with the DEA and became an active law enforcement source.

MICHAEL NADLER:

He was signed up as what’s called a confidential source. He provided corroborated information that allowed us to establish that he was being credible.

GERARDO REYES:

[Speaking Spanish] In his negotiations with the U.S. government, Alex Saab not only shared information but also forfeited around $10 million. This was money earned in the corrupt acts he was being accused of. They agreed on a date for Saab to turn himself in, but Saab never showed up.

MICHAEL NADLER:

The moment Alex Saab did not show up on that deadline, we decided to move forward to charge him with money laundering.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] It’s hard to know if Maduro knew about Saab’s contact with the DEA and the FBI. It’s interesting because for all Maduro has said in favor of Alex Saab, he’s never said anything about this topic.

MICHAEL NADLER:

I do not believe Nicolás Maduro knew that Alex Saab was meeting with us at the time.

GERARDO REYES:

[Speaking Spanish] Why would Maduro continue supporting Saab, making him out to be a hero and bring him home knowing he was a snitch for the U.S.?

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] I just met with a source who is very close to the investigation. I asked the source what they think about Saab’s options.

Their opinion is there is no way that Alex Saab won’t be convicted. They think he’ll do the full 20 years. Or he’ll negotiate some deal. But the source doubts he’ll be able to negotiate because his wife is still in Caracas. And his son Shadi is in Caracas. He didn’t say it specifically, but he thinks they are not in a safe place, and even less safe if he starts cooperating.

JUAN RAVELL:

[Speaking Spanish] So Alex Saab has to choose between 20 years in prison or something happening to his family.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] That was essentially the gist of the conversation, yes.

Caracas, Venezuela

MALE PROTESTER:

[Speaking Spanish] We will never leave Alex Saab behind. Camilla can count on us.

CAMILLA FABRI, Wife of Alex Saab:

[Speaking Spanish] We are, and have always been, a very united family. And like he is a prisoner, we are also prisoners, as his family. But like him, we will continue bravely and calmly as we fight for dignity for all people of the world. For Venezuela and the legitimate government of Nicolás Maduro.

NICOLÁS MADURO:

[Speaking Spanish] Camilla Saab is the hope for a better future. She represents loyalty of our revolutionary cause to one great man: Alex Saab. A great man who has given everything and still gives everything for our fatherland.

JOSHUA GOODMAN:

I don’t know if Maduro wants Alex Saab back. He says he does. But how much of that is just a ruse to rally his base and to use as leverage in negotiations with the United States? It’s possible that he wants him back and he’ll receive them like a hero. But I can also imagine, look what happened to Alex Saab’s partner, Álvaro Pulido. He’s now in jail.

MALE NEWSREADER:

[Speaking Spanish] Nicolás Maduro’s government has confirmed the detention of Álvaro Pulido, Alex Saab’s closest business partner.

FEMALE NEWSREADER:

[Speaking Spanish] Corruption in the Venezuelan state oil company, PDVSA, reached Tareck El Aissami, the Venezuelan oil minister . . .

JOSHUA GOODMAN:

The irony is that Álvaro Pulido is in jail in Venezuela for corrupt oil deals, and yet Maduro keeps fighting for his partner, Alex Saab, to be released from a U.S. prison.

By 2023, Maduro was holding many, many imprisoned Americans, people considered wrongfully detained. And Maduro saw this as an opportunity. People said he viewed them as political pawns in the negotiation with the Biden administration. And their first ask was for Alex Saab to be returned.

December 19, 2023

ROBERTO’S MOTHER [on phone]:

[Speaking Spanish] Hi, Roberto.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] Hi, Mom, how are you?

ROBERTO’S MOTHER [on phone]:

[Speaking Spanish] Good, and you?

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] Fine, good.

ROBERTO’S MOTHER [on phone]:

[Speaking Spanish] What are you up to? Very busy?

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] Yes, well, I’m just standing by for news. [Laughs]

ROBERTO’S FATHER [on phone]:

[Speaking Spanish] But the rumors haven’t been confirmed, have they?

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] Hi, Dad.

ROBERTO’S MOTHER:

[Speaking Spanish] Have they?

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] No, nothing official, yet. But there is lots of evidence that it’s going to happen.

ROBERTO’S FATHER:

[Speaking Spanish] OK. Hang in there.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] There wasn’t much progress on Saab’s case in the past weeks. It seemed the federal court case was on pause and a new negotiation was coming together.

VIII. The Swap

MALE VOICE [on phone]:

This is a huge scoop, Josh, you don’t need me to tell you that. This is a good get. So the White House is no longer denying this, they’re just saying don’t report it yet.

JOSHUA GOODMAN:

I’ve heard it from Saab’s advocates for sure, but from U.S. officials, similar to the people that you’ve been talking to, I had never heard anything like this. I never saw this coming.

There’s always been the Saab narrative that a swap was in the cards, and yet all the Americans being released pale in comparison to the amount of money and man-hours that the U.S. government spent prosecuting one guy who they think is the bagman for Nicolás Maduro. It’s going to happen tomorrow, I’m pretty sure. I don’t know what time, but I think it’s going to happen.

December 20, 2023

JOSHUA GOODMAN:

Good morning. What’s going on? Oh, wow. He’s confirmed in the air? OK, but he’s out of the country. He left the United States. Yeah, I’ve been at the airport since 7. Nope. Maybe I got here too late. OK, thanks. Bye. Let’s get the f—— story out!

“Biden administration releases from jail key ally of Venezuela’s Maduro in swap for imprisoned Americans. This secretly negotiated deal for an allegedly corrupt businessman once held up as a U.S. trophy is bound to anger Venezuela’s opposition.” I’m going to publish. Ready? Posted. Boom.

You know, this will leave a lot of people angry. Venezuelans, people in the Justice Department. A lot of people are going to think this sets a bad precedent.

JUAN RAVELL:

How do you think Roberto’s feeling?

JOSHUA GOODMAN:

Uh, bad, because he can’t go home and this guy is going home. So yeah, I think he’s probably pretty pissed.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] Look, he’s arriving.

FEMALE NEWSREADER:

[Speaking Spanish] . . . a man who never surrendered. A man who never gave up on his principles. A man who wouldn’t bow down, as his wife said, who, for all these years, has led this campaign together with the government of Venezuela to bring about this moment, and this image that you see now brought to you by Telesur. There he is. There is Alex Saab. He’s hugging his wife again and his daughters. Here now is a deep hug with the First Lady, Cilia Flores. She has been waiting here for Alex Saab’s arrival.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] It’s notable that Cilia Flores is there to receive him. Because if there are two people who know about and have benefitted from Saab’s businesses in Venezuela they are Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores, his wife.

The swap with Alex Saab is not just for detained Americans but also some Venezuelan political prisoners. These are six union leaders who were released. They’ve been prisoners in Venezuela for the past year and a half.

MALE NEWSREADER:

Now the other major news this Wednesday night, the high-stakes prisoner swap between the U.S. tonight and Venezuela.

FEMALE NEWSREADER:

Ten Americans, including several the U.S. consider wrongfully detained, were released from that South American country today.

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] I think Chavism, with its autocratic tendencies, has realized that by jailing people, Americans and Venezuelans, it can use them like a savings account. You accumulate prisoners till you need them to retrieve the ultimate prize for Maduro and Cilia Flores.

ALEX SAAB:

[Speaking Spanish] I thought you were going to leave me there.

NICOLÁS MADURO:

[Speaking Spanish] Never. Not in this life or in all the lives that come after this one.

ALEX SAAB:

[Speaking Spanish] Thank you, Mr. President. Life is a constant miracle. Thank you to the people of Venezuela. I feel proud to serve you. And to serve this government. A humane government. A loyal government. A government that doesn’t abandon. And a government, that, like me never gives up. And a population that will never give up either. We will always be victorious. Thank you, Mr. President.

CELIA FLORES:

[Speaking Spanish] This is a story of persecution, kidnapping and torture. But with a happy ending.

NICOLÁS MADURO:

[Speaking Spanish] A beautiful story where justice prevails. Where the truth wins. Alex Saab Morán: a free man for all time.

MICHAEL NADLER:

I don’t know if I’d classify it either way as a happy ending when I see it’s an injustice or justice. Justice wasn’t served here. That’s that simple for me.

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN:

We’ve secured the release of every American being held in Venezuela.

JOSHUA GOODMAN:

I think what Biden saw was an opportunity to try something new, to reengage with Maduro, to talk about elections, to talk about sanctions, talk about immigration.

JOE BIDEN:

In addition to that, Venezuela thus far is keeping their commitment toward a democratic election.

JOSHUA GOODMAN:

For Maduro, very clearly, he wasn’t going to engage with the U.S. either, unless he got what he wanted, which was Alex Saab.

JUAN RAVELL [on phone]:

[Speaking Spanish] Roberto, now that Alex Saab is free, do you think there will be free elections in Venezuela?

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] I honestly don’t think so. You freed Saab, and there is no guarantee they will stick to their word.

JUAN RAVELL [on phone]:

[Speaking Spanish] If Saab goes back to business as usual, will you continue your reporting?

ROBERTO DENIZ:

[Speaking Spanish] Yes, of course. One of my objectives as a journalist on this assignment is to understand what Alex Saab will do now in Venezuela, to find out if he will return to his businesses and to see how much power he’ll have in Venezuela. I will definitely keep investigating this case. Even if it means never returning to Venezuela. It’s a decision I made a while ago, and I still believe it’s the right one.

DIRECTED BY Juan Ravell

REPORTED BY Roberto Deniz

PRODUCED BY Jeff Arak

EDITED BY Pedro Álvarez Gales

SENIOR PRODUCER Frank Koughan

DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY Andrea Daniels Dario Escobar

CINEMATOGRAPHERS Yann Decaumont Alejandro Bernal Jeff Arak Stefano Caggianelli Khyber Jones

SOUND Eduard Gutiérrez Matías Nuñes George Lopez

ADDITIONAL EDITING Mauricio Rodríguez Pons

ASSISTANT EDITORS Christine Giordano Alex LaGore Alex Snider Yarie Vazquez

ORIGINAL MUSIC Elias Serpa and Saúl Guanipa

ADDITIONAL MUSIC Voodoo Tracks APM Cremilda Medina

ONLINE EDITOR/COLORIST Jim Ferguson

SOUND MIX Jim Sullivan

ILLUSTRATIONS Vhaldemar Madama

ANIMATIONS Juan Rayas Ciprés

STYLE GUIDE Luis Palencia

GRAPHIC DESIGN Luis Palencia

ADDITIONAL DESIGN Edward Paruh

GRIP Rafael Peña

DRIVERS Hector Olmos Rodolfo Quiroga Jairo Peñuela

LEGAL Rainer Lorenzo Sam Widdoes

ADDITIONAL PRODUCTION Maye Primera

ADDITIONAL REPORTING Claudia Solera

ADDITIONAL TRANSLATION Boris Muñoz Beatriz Oropeza Cynthia Rodríguez

ARCHIVAL MATERIAL Associated Press Braulio Jatar Screenocean (Reuters) Pond 5 El Heraldo de Barranquilla RCN Colombia Rosa Garrido Noticias Uno Colombia Venepress

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SPECIAL THANKS Lorenzo Morales Maria Paula Martinez Canal Cablenoticias David Meneses Matthew O’Neill Tec Monterrey Deborah Arak Jesse Reffsin Ana Bejarano Almudena Torral Tom Jennings Adrian Gonzalez Giancarlo Fiorella Universidad de Los Andes Carola Solé Patricia Sulbaran Alexandro Aldrete The Vance Center Alexander Papachristou Zachary Press Maria Teresa Ronderos Lais Araujo Coelho

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