On October 14, 2019, Italian judge Francesca Ciranna ordered the preventive seizure of an apartment in Rome located at via Condotti number 9, valued at €4,750,000. The order included the amount of €1,733,731.50 from an account at Che Banca! controlled by Luis Alberto Saab Moran (brother of Alex Saab). Besides the brother, Judge Ciranna also identified Camilla Fabri (partner of Alex Saab), Lorenzo Antonelli (partner of Beatrice Fabri, Camilla’s sister), Elisa Antonelli (Lorenzo’s sister), and Sabrina Roberti (Camilla’s mother) as involved. The English companies Kinloch Investments Ltd, Jamasa Properties Ltd, Marylins Capital Ltd, Glenmore Solutions Ltd, Nvayo Limited, and BSB Trust Limited Company Ltd; the Dubai company Pegasus Trading FZE; and the Italian firm Gruppo Domano s.r.l. used accounts at Banco Sabadell, Erste Group Bank, Sberbank, Fineco, Allianz, Banca d’Italia, Multibank Inc., and UBS Switzerland AG to move funds and acquire the properties described in Italy.
In the context of investigations in Italy, the financial information unit of Banca d’Italia had alerted the competent authorities about Luis Alberto Saab Moran when the Treasury Department sanctioned Alex Saab. The sanction against Saab stemmed from another action by the Department of Justice, initiated by the DEA, for Saab’s failure to surrender to the DEA as per a cooperation agreement with that federal agency which stipulated that Saab would surrender by May 30, 2019. From that moment, Saab’s ordeal began.
Prior to May 2019, Saab had met with DEA agents on at least three occasions, and according to case documents, Saab had agreed to be an informant for that federal agency. The reason the DEA is involved, rather than other federal agencies or the Department of Justice directly, is German Enrique Rubio Salas, a former kingpin of the Bogotá Cartel, wanted for drug trafficking in Italy and Saab’s main partner since his arrival in Venezuela. If he had chosen another partner, it is likely the DEA would never have taken an interest in Saab. Corruption in Venezuela, unless it involves drug trafficking, does not attract that agency’s attention. However, Rubio Salas is behind the entire Saab scheme. Rubio Salas was the one who introduced Saab to the Slebi De La Rosa brothers (experts in money laundering).
The criminal scheme attributed to Saab’s group involved laundering over $350 million, resulting from corruption related to the SUCRE and contracts from the Global Construction Fund, through the U.S. financial system. Moreover, this is not by far the only criminal act committed by the group. Judge Ciranna’s order indicates that at the time of the asset seizure in Italy, Saab had outstanding legal issues in the USA, England, Bulgaria, Colombia, and Ecuador, in addition to those of his partner Rubio Salas.
Interestingly, the Italian judge’s actions coincided with Fabri’s escape to Russia, after which she would travel to Cuba. Since then, Fabri has been a fugitive from her country’s justice system. She eventually arrived in Venezuela, where she currently resides. Fabri’s communications, as well as those of other close associates of Saab like Rubio Salas, have never been secret to the regimes that Saab has worked for. Therefore, in our opinion, the news of Saab’s cooperation with the DEA was not unknown to the intelligence agencies of Russia, Cuba, and Venezuela. The letter from former chancellor Arreaza to Saab after his arrest in Cape Verde suggests as much. The conditioning of ongoing negotiations between the opposition and representatives of Nicolás Maduro in Mexico regarding the appointment and presence of Alex Saab, along with Jorge Rodríguez’s announcement, further supports this claim. Chavismo knows everything Saab has done in recent years. His excellent relationships with Erdogan, Putin, and the Castros predate the approval with which Saab was turned into the czar of the Bolivarian bourgeoisie.
What will be interesting now is, on one side, the reaction from Jorge Rodríguez, who may argue that Saab’s cooperation agreement with the DEA is false. He will likely not refer to the $12,650,697.70 that Saab transferred from his accounts to the DEA’s accounts. There is no clearer indication of guilt than those transfers. Rodríguez will also not mention Saab’s admission of involvement in bribery and corruption, which motivated the payments to the DEA described above. In other words, without Saab’s admission of guilt, those funds would never have reached the DEA’s accounts, which now has precise information about some of the accounts controlled by Saab. However, it is not only the DEA that possesses this information. Chavismo will undoubtedly work with its partners in Russia, Turkey, the Emirates, China, and Switzerland to secure funds. It should be noted, for instance, that Saab used Evrofinance Mosnarbank in Russia (in which Chavismo holds a 50% stake through FONDEN) as a cash box. After the restructuring of that bank and the transfer of the remaining 50% to the Russian state, Saab and company can forget about what is there.
On the other hand, the struggle among the groups of lawyers allegedly representing Saab appears to be the main event. The Department of Justice doubts that the firm Baker Hostetler is acting in Saab’s interest and has repeatedly communicated that it could be directed by the Chavista regime. In fact, case documents indicate that since Saab’s arrest in Cape Verde, Baker Hostetler never mentioned (until yesterday): either the meetings between Saab and the DEA; or the cooperation agreement; or the admission of payment of bribes and committed illicit acts; or the payments to the DEA. This will have repercussions and is very serious: Baker Hostetler is not a trustworthy legal representative.
Baker Hostetler is in an impossible argumentative position, now admitting that their client did indeed have meetings with the Department of Justice and federal agencies, but only to confirm that neither Saab nor his companies were involved in illicit activities. Baker Hostetler claimed that these meetings were known to the Bolivarian government of Venezuela. What Baker Hostetler did not mention were the four payments of $12,650,697.70 that Saab made to the DEA. If he is innocent, why did he pay? A question Rodríguez should clarify is: if Chavismo was aware, as his lawyers claim, why did they approve the payment of $12,650,697.70 from Saab to the DEA?
The other lawyer group, led by Neil M. Schuster, insists that publicly revealing the cooperation agreement between Saab and the DEA will endanger the lives of Fabri and her family in Venezuela. But if, as Baker Hostetler now argues, Chavismo was already aware of meetings between Saab and US authorities, why would Camilla Fabri be at risk? The meetings between Saab and the DEA began in August 2016 and culminated in an agreement in July 2018. This means that years before Fabri became a fugitive and arrived in Venezuela, Saab was negotiating with the DEA with the presumed approval of Chavismo. Her social media presence indicates that once in Venezuela, Fabri has the absolute support and protection of Chavismo.
The arguments presented by Schuster do not correspond to reality. Those of Baker Hostetler also do not, but neither the Department of Justice nor the judge in the case would make public information about payments that were not made. Saab, his patrons, and lawyers tried to play games with the justice system, and they miscalculated.
Additional note February 19: as expected, Jorge Rodríguez responded to the news without mentioning the payment of over $12 million to the DEA, making the following statements:
Rodríguez lies, as always. He spoke of “indecent” torture, of teeth being removed from Saab by “savage beatings,” all of this in Cape Verde. However, the ruling of the court of the Economic Community of West African States or ECOWAS clearly states (page 77) that the Plaintiff, namely Alex Saab, did not prove that he was tortured the night of August 29-30 as described. In other words, with two fewer teeth, Saab found it impossible to demonstrate that he had been tortured.
Rodríguez then added that Saab is being tortured in the USA, but none of Saab’s lawyers have made such claims.
Rodríguez criticized the luxury treatment that the US gives to its spies (Cliver Alcalá, Christopher Figuera, and Rafael Ramirez). He forgot to mention that Alcalá, Figuera, and especially Ramirez were men of the Chavista revolution, and enjoyed his complete trust for decades.
Can Rodríguez, a representative of a regime that systematically tortures and kills with impunity, be believed? As much as one should believe in that cancer that plagued Saab.