Saab, a top financial ally of ousted Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, admitted to using the U.S. financial system to launder bribes connected to Venezuela’s Local Committees for Supply and Production (CLAP)—a state program meant to distribute food to impoverished communities, OCCRP reported.
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He faces up to 20 years in federal prison and has agreed to forfeit $195 million, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
The guilty plea serves as a vindication for Armando.info, a local investigative news outlet and OCCRP member center. More than nine years ago, the outlet pioneered reporting that brought Saab out of the shadows, exposing his ties to multimillion-dollar state contracts and the delivery of low-quality food to vulnerable populations.
At the time, Saab and the Maduro government vehemently denied the links. Saab sued the Armando.info team in Venezuela, arguing he had no connection to the CLAP program.
“The lawsuit was an attempt to censor us, to silence us… He knew everything we said was true,” Roberto Deniz, a journalist and editor at Armando.info, told OCCRP. Calling Wednesday’s plea the end of a public narrative built to protect the businessman, Deniz added: “It is the end of a charade, a farce… Now he told the truth.”
Saab’s legal entanglements in the U.S. originally stemmed from a separate 2019 indictment. Federal prosecutors charged Saab alongside his business partner, Álvaro Pulido Vargas, with laundering over $350 million diverted from a Venezuelan state contract to build low-income housing. Following his 2020 arrest in Cape Verde and subsequent extradition to Miami in 2021, Caracas mounted an aggressive diplomatic campaign—granting Saab diplomatic status, labeling his detention a “kidnapping,” and claiming he was securing goods to bypass U.S. sanctions.
