US justice rejected Alex Saab’s request to drop money laundering charges against him

United States Justice on Thursday rejected a request by Alex Saab, alleged leader of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, to drop money laundering charges against him.

Saab claims he cannot stand trial because Venezuelan regime granted him diplomatic immunity, but federal judge in Miami He said that before presenting his arguments, he had to surrender to the US authorities, who are proceeding with his extradition from Cape Verde..

The African country arrested the Colombian businessman in June 2020 at the request of the United States, while his plane stopped there to refuel during a trip to Iran.

Wednesday, the Supreme Court of Cape Verde He spoke in favor of the United States’ request to extradite him, but his lawyers appealed against the measure.

The petition will extend the process in the African country, which has rejected all of Saab’s previous proposals, and will take between two weeks and two months to resolve. It is the last possible resort for the Colombian and his defense. If unsuccessful, there will be no further obstacles to his extradition.

However, even before a possible extradition, lawyers for Saab are trying to convince U.S. courts to drop the charges. On Monday, one of his lawyers argued in federal court that the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations granted diplomatic immunity to Saab because he had held diplomatic posts in the Maduro government since 2018.

Judge Robert Scola was not convinced. In the ruling on Thursday, in which he rejected Saab’s motion, he said that sees no reason to make an exception to the rules that fugitives cannot access US courts if they have not surrendered to US authorities.

“It bears repeating: if Saab Moran is to raise any ‘fundamental’ challenges to the case, he will have to physically show up in this neighborhood as the government has repeatedly requested,” Scola wrote.

The businessman, born in Barranquilla and of Lebanese origin, is linked to several companies, including Group Grand Limited (GGL), accused of providing food at an additional cost to a program of aid to the underprivileged of the Maduro regime, known as CLAP. ORA US government official said in July 2019 that with the CLAPs, Saab and Maduro’s three stepchildren were deceptively earning “hundreds of millions of dollars”.

Saab’s name first appeared in the media when former Venezuelan prosecutor Luisa Ortega accused him in 2017 of being a pioneer of Maduro. According to the United States, between November 2011 and September 2015, Saab and his right-hand man, Álvaro Enrique Pulido, laundered up to $ 350 million defrauded through the exchange control system. Because they have colluded with others to launder their illicit proceeds and transfer them from Venezuela to US bank accounts, Washington has jurisdiction over this matter.

The Trump administration has made Saab’s extradition one of its top priorities and even sent a Navy ship to the African archipelago to closely monitor Saab’s situation. The Maduro regime, meanwhile, described Saab’s lawsuit as Washington’s attempt to force regime change and ordered it to oppose the extradition at all costs.

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