Yesterday, the Treasury penalized Alex Saab, while the Grand Jury from the Justice Department in South Florida indicted him and his crime associate Alvaro Pulido Vargas, also known as German Rubio (see the indictment below). This site became interested in Alex Saab in July 2013. I remember being in contact with Ecuadorian journalist Gabriela Quiroz during my investigation. At that time, Saab was involved in a multi-million dollar scam with SUCRE, a regional currency exchange mechanism established by Hugo Chávez and his socialist allies. Ecuadorian authorities had seized $59 million as part of an investigation into a $159 million corruption scheme involving the Global Construction Fund, one of Saab’s fronts in Ecuador.
Back then, there was no Armando.info nor its “persecuted journalists.” Saab was simply an opportunistic newcomer, linked to the narco-senator Piedad Córdoba, with Alvaro Pulido Vargas a/k/a German Rubio, and Nicolás Maduro, who somehow passed all the due diligence filters of the Venezuelan and Colombian governments, signing, let’s never forget in the presence of Juan Manuel Santos, María Ángela Holguín, Hugo Chávez, and Nicolás Maduro, contracts worth over $500 million. That’s why we took an interest; this was a bolichico – similar to Derwick Associates, which is Colombian to boot – involved in a colossal theft of public funds. I remember thinking, “What is this thug doing in Venezuela?” I spent days searching through archives to find the video above, where Saab made his “grand entrance,” just four days after registering the Global Construction Fund in Colombia.
Saab was not pleased when this site exposed his “business.” He reached out, answered phone calls, and even proposed a meeting in Paris. When I replied that I would meet him in London, he sent one of his associated thugs, Amir Nassar Tayupe, from Caracas to meet with me and threaten me. The meeting with Nassar Tayupe was certainly a surreal experience: the lieutenant carrying out the boss’s orders, the phone call to the boss to prove the meeting was happening – putting me on the phone, offers of trips to Caracas – all expenses paid – to “show them that we are a serious company”…
Of course, Saab did not know, but this site had very good sources: in the office of Ricardo Molina, within his organization, in Ecuador, in Colombia, even his (ex?) wife was contributing information. Nassar Tayupe, along with another one of Saab’s lawyers, Abelardo de la Espriella*, provided information. Something I should have paid attention to, but didn’t: Nassar Tayupe told me that the thugs from Derwick Associates had proposed to Saab to form an alliance to silence me. Then he sued me in Caracas. Maybe that set the stage for the actual breaking and entering of my apartment in London, the theft of laptops, illegal surveillance, the defamation campaign and the sexual abuse threats against my children that followed.
By 2013, Saab was already running an extensive corruption network at the highest level in the Andean region. In Ecuador, he had Jaime Francisco Sánchez Yánez, brother of one of his employees in Caracas, as a personal advisor to Rafael Correa. In Caracas, he had William Amaro, Nicolás Maduro’s bagman. In Colombia, he associated with the narco-senator Piedad Córdoba and other narco-financed politicians, like Gustavo Petro. This, and not Venezuelan corruption, is why Saab and his associates have been under the DEA’s watchful eye for years.
When the scandal in Ecuador brought Saab into the spotlight, he had nothing to fear. Galo Chiriboga, the former Attorney General of Ecuador, received orders from above. When Fanny Kertzman and I tried to publish about Saab’s rampant corruption in Colombia’s Revista Semana, de la Espriella sent absurd and totally unfounded accusations against me, claiming I was a “fugitive” from “Venezuelan justice.” No government authority from Santos’s narcoterrorist friends questioned Saab or his connection to Córdoba and Petro. Ever.
But we kept receiving information about Saab. He “owned” banks in Dominica. He flew the narco-senator everywhere. He was on yachts, surrounded by prostitutes and “living the life.” His (strange?) wife was vacationing in a mansion in Paris. One of his children was about to become a Hollywood actor and was burning cash like there was no tomorrow in Los Angeles. The same goes for German Rubio a/k/a Alvaro Pulido Vargas, and his children, all associated with Saab’s cartel.
Then there was his venture into oil with TRENACO. Again, long before Reuters produced one of their “exclusives,” this site exposed what could have been the largest individual contract ever awarded to a shell company by PDVSA. Our sources reported that Saab’s stench was so strong that even Trafigura didn’t want to touch it. Just imagine, rejected by people like Trafigura…
Saab is just the latest in a growing list of “businessmen” exposed on this site over the years who end up indicted, charged, sanctioned, or arrested. “Businessmen” who only thrive in Venezuela, becoming overnight billionaires in a country whose economy has contracted to levels only seen in war zones. “Businessmen” involved in food, housing, gold, debt, foreign exchange, and energy sectors, all “successful” in their exploits. Jeff Bezos has nothing on Venezuelan chavista “entrepreneurs.” This site boasts a stellar and unmatched track record (within the context of Venezuelan investigative journalism) in exposing this class of thugs. As a friend of the site remarked recently regarding Saab, “I’m really not blowing smoke when I say every time I read one of those stories, I’m amazed at how far ahead on this you have been…”
The individuals highlighted here are the main culprits in a crisis that was visible to all, many years before it reached humanitarian status. It is people like Saab and the theft of hundreds of millions of dollars facilitated by chavistas that are the real cause of the obliteration of Venezuela’s economy, leading to hunger and the largest exodus Latin America has ever seen. Sanctimonious fools like Tom Shannon or Francisco Rodriguez are trying to shift the blame onto sanctions, but this site has seen and documented long before anybody else where unrestrained corruption was pushing Venezuela. Saab’s just a poster boy.
Now that his utterly corrupt cartel has been exposed, this site would like to ask what will “friend of the U.S.” Ivan Duque do? When will Colombia issue red alerts to INTERPOL to have Saab and his criminal associates arrested? What, if anything, do Santos and Holguin have to say about Saab, specifically regarding the dereliction of the most basic common sense and duty when they sat there signing multimillion dollar contracts with such a thug? The fact that Colombia is dealing with over 1.3 million exiled Venezuelans is, in no small part, due to Santos’s own carelessness in dealing with the likes of Saab.
It remains a certainty that Maduro’s regime isn’t going to touch one of its favorite Boligarchs. However, Colombia’s Duque has a lot to do in this respect. Let’s just see whether he walks the talk…
*Abelardo de la Espriella, Saab, Pulido, et al have been “persons of interest” for the DEA for many years due to their alleged involvement in laundering money for Colombian drug cartels.