Authorities in Venezuela have brought corruption charges against a businessman who is a fugitive in a separate U.S. money laundering case targeting a top ally of the country’s president, Nicolás Maduro.
By WSVN
Apr 14, 2023
Alvaro Pulido, wearing an orange jumpsuit and handcuffed, was among a group of seven Venezuelan officials and businessmen escorted by a masked security agent on their way to an initial judicial hearing in Caracas in images shared Friday by Venezuela’s government.
The men were taken into custody as part of a sprawling investigation into corruption in the state-run oil company PDVSA focused on the payment of massive bribes in exchange for lucrative contracts to move tankers of Venezuelan crude sanctioned by the U.S.
Pulido stands out among the more than 50 alleged schemers already arrested because of his relationship to Alex Saab.
The two Colombians were long-time business partners who made a fortune selling food and other items to Venezuela’s socialist government over the past decade. The two were criminally charged together in 2019 by federal prosecutors in Miami for allegedly siphoning off $350 million from state contracts to build low income housing. Saab was arrested on a U.S. warrant a year later while en route to Iran.
Pulido’s arrest in Venezuela, which had been rumored for weeks but not confirmed until now, has no direct relationship to the U.S. criminal case.
But it nonetheless could complicate Saab’s argument that he is a Venezuelan diplomat entitled to immunity from prosecution in the U.S., said John Feeley, a former U.S. Ambassador to Panama with decades of experience working in Latin América.
“With Pulido’s arrest, Saab’s defense begins to crumble,” Feeley said. “He will now have a hard time insisting on diplomatic status when his business partner is facing corruption charges in Caracas.”
It was not immediately possible to locate an attorney for Pulido and attorneys for Saab wouldn’t comment.
Corruption has long plagued Venezuela. The OPEC nation was the fourth-most corrupt in the world in the latest rankings by Transparency International.
Opportunities for graft have proliferated as a result of U.S. sanctions, which has scared away more established oil companies and opened the door for murky middlemen who purchase the crude at a steep discount and transport their valuable cargo on so-called ghost tankers that hide their locations from satellite tracking systems.
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Read More: WSVN – Venezuela arrests U.S. fugitive as part of oil graft purge
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