The recent case of Italo-Venezuelan businessman Alfredo Schiavo, released on May 3, 2025, after five years in prison in Venezuela, has unveiled a complex network of connections between organized crime, paramilitarism, state repression, and international diplomacy.
Schiavo’s detention in 2020 was part of a repressive operation against those involved in the failed “Operation Gideon”, a maritime incursion allegedly linked to former Venezuelan military personnel, foreign mercenaries, and funding from abroad. But Schiavo’s story goes far beyond a simple arrest.
Schiavo was among the hundreds of political prisoners held in the dungeons that Nicolás Maduro’s regime operates throughout Venezuela. The Italo-Venezuelan businessman spent five years of his life in El Helicoide, which, in addition to serving as a center for confinement and systematic torture, is headquarters for the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service (SEBIN).
Who is Alfredo Schiavo?
After his release, the Italo-Venezuelan businessman Alfredo Schiavo traveled to Rome under consular protection. (Photo courtesy of the Community of San Egidio)
Alfredo Schiavo, a 66-year-old businessman at the time of his arrest, was taken into custody by SEBIN in Catia La Mar on June 8, 2020. His name surfaced in connection with the logistical funding of Gedeón, an operation aiming to capture Nicolás Maduro and other high-ranking officials of the Chavista regime.
According to the official Venezuelan narrative, Schiavo acted as a “civil financier” of a terrorist and coup plan, allegedly with foreign support, and this was presented before the courts serving the regime.
Though he neither carried weapons nor participated in the attempted incursion, Venezuelan justice sentenced him in May 2024 to 30 years in prison for treason, conspiracy, and financing terrorism—penalties reserved for the most grave crimes in the Venezuelan Penal Code.
The Case Fabricated by the Regime’s Prosecutor
The case of Schiavo illustrates how the line between organized crime and armed political action becomes blurred in contexts of polarization and repression. According to the Venezuelan regime’s attorney general, Tarek William Saab, the Operation Gedeón was “organized in the United States and prepared in Colombia,” with financial support from Venezuelan exiles and complicit businessmen.
In this context, Alfredo Schiavo was allegedly a key logistical player, transferring resources to a clandestine network to facilitate the incursion.
However, human rights NGOs, as well as organizations like the UN, see a different scenario: a political persecution where legal definitions for prosecuting organized crime are applied arbitrarily to punish political dissent.
Thus, in 2024, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention ruled that his imprisonment was “illegal and arbitrary,” calling for his immediate release.
The reality blends both sides: a civil figure associated with an irregular armed project, judged without procedural guarantees and held for five years without a firm sentence. Criminal or scapegoat?
International Network and Diplomatic Release
Schiavo was released thanks to a diplomatic operation led by the Community of San Egidio, a Catholic organization linked to the Vatican, in coordination with the Italian Embassy and Venezuelan authorities, including the governor of Carabobo state, Rafael Lacava. Following his release, he traveled to Rome under consular protection.
This type of release—outside a transparent judicial process—suggests an instrumental use of justice by the regime: while opponents are condemned as “terrorists,” they can be released through diplomatic maneuvers, without revoking the sentence or providing public explanations.
This is the case of Alfredo Schiavo, who was not exonerated, just freed.
What Does This Case Reveal About Organized Crime in Venezuela?
More than an isolated incident, the Schiavo case fits into a troubling pattern: the use of extreme criminal classifications—terrorism, treason—to criminalize political opposition.
It also speaks to the existence of international networks of clandestine financing, often linked to business exile or paramilitary groups.
At the same time, it reveals—rather confirms—the lack of separation between the judiciary and the political power strategies that have governed Venezuela since the rise of Chavismo, first through Hugo Chávez and later through his successor, Nicolás Maduro.
But above all, the case of Schiavo exposes the instrumentalization of organized crime as a pretext to control or negotiate with dissenting sectors.
Organized Crime Offense: The Perfect Excuse
Indeed, in authoritarian contexts, organized crime is no longer merely an external threat, but an internal resource to justify repressive measures, prolonged imprisonments, or even diplomatic actions.
The Schiavo case mirrors this logic: a story where the figure of the “terrorism financier” intertwines with that of a political hostage on a broader geopolitical chessboard.
The case of Italo-Venezuelan businessman Alfredo Schiavo exemplifies how the dynamics of organized crime, penal justice, and geopolitics dangerously intersect. His release, accused of financing terrorism through Vatican efforts, reveals both the fragility of the Venezuelan judicial system and the political use of crime as a control tool. Today, Schiavo is free in Italy, but his case remains a symbol of a country where law is used as a sword, not as a scale.