An office located in an exclusive nearly 50-story skyscraper in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE), conceals new secrets about the business dealings of Alex Saab Morán and Álvaro Pulido Vargas in Venezuela. It is situated in the Tiffany Tower, part of a nearby complex adjacent to the artificial lake of Jumeirah, and serves as the headquarters for the pharmaceutical company North Life Pharma and other businesses belonging to Jean Paul Rivas Guanipa, a Venezuelan entrepreneur with investment funds in Switzerland and real estate in Spain. At one point in his career, he intersected with Saab and Pulido as they were becoming Nicolás Maduro’s favored contractors.
In December 2023, during negotiations between U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration and the Caracas regime, which would result in a prisoner exchange that month, Alex Saab was released from a Miami prison where he awaited trial for money laundering charges linked to the Global Construction Fund.
Upon returning to Venezuela, Maduro quickly elevated Saab, this time openly, to a high-ranking state official. In his rise through the Chavista bureaucracy, Saab reached the rank of Minister of Industries in October last year, a position he still holds. Meanwhile, his former partner, Álvaro Pulido, faced a different fate: he has been in prison in Caracas for nearly two years, accused of corruption in the Pdvsa-Crypto scandal.
While these dramatically opposing fates have unfolded publicly, connections from the shared past between Saab and Pulido, as hidden beneficiaries of lucrative contracts awarded by Maduro, continue to emerge.
One such connection is Jean Paul Rivas. At 57 years old, he graduated from the Metropolitan University and, although he presents himself as a “serial entrepreneur” in some of his biographical profiles, his proclaimed successes have not made him well-known among the Venezuelan business community.
There was a time when he publicly advocated for the social responsibility of entrepreneurs: “We cannot look at the poor from the highway,” he declared in 2006 to the magazine Debates Iesa regarding the entrance of Cruzsalud into the market, founded by Rivas in 2004 to provide medical insurance to low-income individuals. “The goal is to serve minorities and provide them with the appropriate medical guidance,” Rivas later told the Caracas newspaper El Nacional in a publication dated July 30, 2007.
Nearly a decade later, in 2017, Jean Paul Rivas became involved with the Saab-Pulido tandem in the lucrative importation of medicines from India through two shell companies, Group Grand Limited and Asasi Food Fzc, which the pair of Colombian merchants also used to sell low-quality food at inflated prices to the Local Supply and Production Committees (CLAP). Subsequently, Rivas’s own North Life Pharma would continue the business of importing medicines from India, as evidenced by numerous documents obtained by Armando.Info for this report.
Almost simultaneously, Rivas’s personal portfolio expanded beyond Venezuela through The Onsider, a real estate company that acquires and renovates buildings in Barcelona, Spain, to offer “cozy and luxurious spaces for extended stays.” When launching this business, Spanish media presented him in mid-2015 as the “guru of healthcare for the poor” or the “king of social health” in Venezuela, referring to his tenure in the insurance sector. In Switzerland, Rivas joined an asset and wealth management firm, Sumus Capital, and also established Black Fountain Capital, another investment advisory firm for startups with a presence in Spain, Switzerland, and Dubai, where he shares an office with North Life Pharma.
Holy Remedy
The supply of medicines from India was a business that moved millions of dollars, judging by the contracts obtained by Saab and Pulido’s companies. According to internal documents from the state Venezuelan Corporation for Foreign Trade (Corpovex), which centralized public imports at that time, between 2017 and 2018, it awarded Group Grand Limited, registered in Hong Kong, two contracts totaling a little over $154 million, while it granted another three contracts totaling 192 million euros to Asasi Food Fzc, registered in the UAE.
The prices of the medicines from India featured even higher markups than the food sold to the CLAP, surpassing 2,000% for some drugs, according to documents obtained for this investigation.
At least at the beginning of the venture, Jean Paul Rivas played a key role in the business that ultimately benefited Saab and Pulido: for example, in the search for suppliers, he visited several factories in India, such as Bharat Parenterals Limited. A record of a meeting that took place on June 1, 2017, at this pharmaceutical manufacturer’s facility confirms Rivas’s presence in the negotiations. “The meeting started immediately after the group of visitors from Black Pearl Capital and Group Grand Limited toured the plant, which included quality control and formulation development facilities,” states the document, drafted by an executive from Bharat Parenterals Limited. Rivas visited other factories in India, a country considered the largest manufacturer of generic drugs in the world.
In 2017, Rivas was also a partner of Black Pearl Capital, an investment fund established by two Iranian investors, originally registered in the Cayman Islands and Switzerland. When consulted for this report through an email questionnaire, Rivas acknowledged providing advisory services to Group Grand Limited for a period of “three to six months in 2017,” but stated that he “never reached the point of establishing a contractual relationship,” nor did he “receive any payment” from the company controlled by Saab and Pulido, whom he met in 2015 “at a business meeting,” he claimed.
For this reason, the businessman stated in writing in a second round of questions, it would be “misleading and factually incorrect to describe me as acting on behalf of Group Grand Limited” and that “there is no room for confusion, nor any interpretation on this matter.” The documents seen for this report reveal that Rivas and his collaborators exchanged communications regarding negotiations with Group Grand Limited. But “the decisions were not made by me or any of my associated companies,” insisted Rivas.
During the supplier search tour, Rivas was accompanied by Bastian Ruenz, a German citizen also involved at that time with Black Pearl Capital and an employee of Rivas at other companies, and Vanessa Josmir Peñaloza Lira, a Venezuelan woman now 40 years old, who served as the legal representative of Salva Foods 2015, the same company with which the Colombians established the now-defunct Tiendas CLAP in the likewise defunct state network of Abastos Bicentenario, which arose from the expropriation of Éxito stores from the French Group Casino.
Weeks after Rivas’s visit to the medicine manufacturers in India, in August 2017 and already in exile, the then Attorney General of the Republic, Luisa Ortega Díaz, stated that Group Grand Limited belonged to Maduro himself, although it was controlled by Saab and Pulido. Prior to that, in April 2017, Armando.Info had established the connection of Group Grand Limited with Saab and Pulido.
When asked if he conducted business with companies managed by the Colombian entrepreneurs, Rivas stated in writing that “I cannot confirm which companies are controlled by whom and I do not ask for the ultimate beneficial owners (UBO) of a company with which I do business.” He also did not clarify through whom he was contacted to advise Group Grand Limited. “Please understand that I cannot answer this question to avoid exposing any third party publicly without their consent,” Rivas pointed out in a second email questionnaire.
Some documents obtained for this report indicate that Rivas flew on several of the planes that belonged to Saab and Pulido from Caracas to destinations like Miami or Bogotá between 2014 and 2016. “I cannot comment on the possible ownership of third-party companies or any other third-party assets. Furthermore, please note that I do not recall the tail numbers of the planes on which I supposedly flew ten years ago,” Rivas responded.
Not So Heroic
On September 23, 2024, Nicolás Maduro praised the search for medicines from India conducted by Alex Saab. “That was a dreadful persecution; we faced it with the support of important entrepreneurs here and around the world; it was during that time that they kidnapped Alex Saab because he was one of the businessmen who most helped the country to bring in the triangulated medicines from around the world,” he expressed in his weekly TV show, Con Maduro+.
In his narrative, he claimed that after being purchased in India, the medications had to be “triangulated”—as he put it—through up to six countries before arriving in Venezuela. However, the documents obtained for this report contradict this sort of epic narrative of international intrigue surrounding Alex Saab’s mission, as they indicate that the merchandise was dispatched directly from India to Caracas, by both sea and air.
In fact, the reviewed documents show that the maritime shipment was dispatched from Indian ports like Nhava Sheva, which opens to the Arabian Sea, to the La Guaira terminal on Venezuela’s central coast. In some cases, the medicines were transported by air from Mumbai Airport to Maiquetía, which serves the city of Caracas, driving up costs. This is also confirmed by customs records in India.
The documents also allow for an estimate of the overpricing that the companies controlled by Alex Saab and Álvaro Pulido applied to the medicine business at a time when the shortage of drugs in the Venezuelan market fluctuated between 80% and 90%, as warned by United Nations experts and various businessunions and chambers.
A proforma invoice dated July 2017 and issued by Bharat Parenterals Limited, the same manufacturer visited by Jean Paul Rivas, confirms that the antiepileptic Phenitoine, in the oral suspension (125 milligrams / 5 milliliters) was purchased by Group Grand Limited at $0.4059 per unit. Subsequently, the company controlled by Saab charged the Ministry of Health $8,770 for the same product, representing a 2,060% increase, as stated in an invoice from October 2017 published seven years ago by Armando.Info in a first investigation regarding the involvement of the Saab-Pulido duo in the purchase of medicines from India.
Similarly, 56,000 units of the antiepileptic Phenitoine were sold by Group Grand Limited to Maduro’s regime for $491,120 after paying the manufacturer just $22,730: again, a mark-up of 20 times the original purchase cost of the product. Bharat Parenterals Limited did not respond to an interview request submitted via email.
Customs data from India show that, between 2018 and 2019, Bharat Parenterals Limited directly sent medicines valued at approximately $21 million to Venezuela. In the annual meeting before its shareholders on September 30, 2020, one of the company’s executives acknowledged the impact on business caused by the decline in exports to Venezuela “due to currency issues,” as well as “strict sanctions” against Maduro’s regime imposed by the United States and the European Union.
Another clear case of overpricing occurred with the antibiotic Amoxicillin (Clavulanic Acid): The original value from the manufacturer Ophira Enterprise Pvt Ltd was $0.81 per unit, but Group Grand Limited sold it to the Ministry of Health for $19.69, an equivalent increase of 2,330%.
To verify the inflated prices charged, Corpovex or the Ministry of Health would have only needed to compare the prices marked by Alex Saab’s company against the International Medical Product Pricing Guide, which the World Health Organization (WHO) periodically prepares for governments to have references when bidding and contracting supplies.
Ironically, from his position as Minister of Industries, Alex Saab today proclaims himself as a champion of Made in Venezuela. “We want all medicine, every injection, every package, everything needed to carry out the final production of medicine, to be made in Venezuela,” he promised on March 12 during a meeting with representatives from the pharmaceutical industry.
During that same event, Maduro reiterated praises for Saab but exaggerated the heroic aspects of his performance even more. He asserted that, after being detained in Cabo Verde in June 2020, Alex Saab was “subjected to various forms of physical torture” because they wanted “to extract from him the secrets of how gasoline, food, and those medicines reached Venezuela, and this man valiantly kept those secrets so that a people could survive and all those medicines could reach Venezuela; that is the truth.”
The obtained documentation also shows that, in addition to Rivas’s involvement, those companies controlled by Saab and Pulido, and the manufacturers in India, there was another player in the business: Valboro Trading Limited, a pharmaceutical trader responsible for connecting buyers with producers of the medicines. According to the documentation obtained, Valboro Trading Limited, present in Gibraltar and Bulgaria, demanded a commission of 2.5% for the sale of medicines from various Indian suppliers dispatched to Venezuela through Group Grand Limited, Asasi Food Fzc, and North Life Pharma itself, Rivas’s company.
Today, Valboro Trading Limited still claims payment failures in commissions from Indian manufacturers and also asserts claims against North Life Pharma. For their part, Rivas and North Life Pharma insisted that such claims for payments constitute undue pressure as they assert they have already fulfilled their commitments to Valboro Trading Limited. In their email responses for this report, they added that they have taken legal action regarding this matter.
And the Business Continued
After Group Grand Limited and Asasi Food FZC, the company that continued the supply of medicines from India for Venezuela was North Life Pharma itself, at least in 2018.
North Life Pharma was registered in the United Arab Emirates by Jean Paul Rivas on October 10, 2017, almost simultaneously with his advisory role for Group Grand Limited, Saab and Pulido’s company. The rapid rise of the company is documented in corporate presentations, as well as communications with potential clients and suppliers. In these, North Life Pharma reported revenues of $24 million in 2018 and claimed to have sent approximately 1,900 tons of pharmaceutical products to Latin American countries on “15 B-747 aircraft and 100 forty-foot containers” transported by ships.
In response to an initial email questionnaire, the company asserted that it did not sign contracts with Maduro’s regime and that “it has never done business with the Venezuelan government or intermediaries of the Venezuelan government.” However, in a second set of responses sent also via email, North Life Pharma admitted that “about 7 years ago (in 2018), the company and several competing pharmaceutical companies manufactured and supplied pharmaceutical products destined for Venezuela.”
According to this account, North Life Pharma’s clients were “several private companies, all legally established in the Middle East,” and after 2018, Rivas’s company “stopped receiving orders for the Venezuelan market.” However, the company did not disclose the names of those clients.
The documents obtained for this investigation also show that North Life Pharma placed orders with Bharat Parenterals Limited, the manufacturer that Rivas visited in June 2017 on behalf of Group Grand Limited, in which the consignee of the goods was the Ministry of Health and the notifying party was Corpovex, the state company that awarded contracts in 2017 and 2018 to the two companies operated by Saab and Pulido.
On this point, North Life Pharma maintained that in international trade, this information “does not necessarily reflect commercial relations” and that the “recipient on an invoice or shipping document is simply the location to which a shipment is transported.”
On the website of Bharat Parenterals Limited, North Life Pharma is still highlighted as one of its clients today.
North Life Pharma’s corporate presentations also included as examples of “products supplied in the past” a photo of a Paracetamol package and another of Cefalexin for the “Government of Venezuela,” both packaged with the visual identity that Maduro’s regime assigns to the drugs it distributes, namely, with the Venezuelan flag and the slogan “Socialism is health” labeled. In light of this evidence, Rivas’s company responded to Armando.info that the packaging designs are “provided by clients or designed according to clients’ guidelines and specifications.”
In addition to the shipments that ended up in the Venezuelan market with distribution handled by Maduro’s regime, North Life Pharma also sent medicines from India to Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador. In the latter country, the company opened a subsidiary where Jean Paul Rivas is listed as a shareholder along with José Fernando Silva López, who has accompanied Rivas in several of his companies since the creation of Cruzsalud in 2004. In North Life Pharma, Silva is responsible for sales, as explained by the company via email.
While Alex Saab serves from his office in Caracas as Minister of Industry, the traces of his business dealings in the shadow of Nicolás Maduro can be found even in an office in Dubai. From there, Jean Paul Rivas continues pursuing other ventures.