Venezuela deported – Venezuela’s government says it deported Alex Saab, a close ally of Nicolás Maduro once pardoned by President Joe Biden, to face multiple criminal investigations in the United States. The move follows Saab’s shifting status inside Venezuela’s leadership, the pr
Venezuela’s government announced Saturday that it deported Alex Saab, a close ally of Nicolás Maduro, to face criminal proceedings in the United States—setting off another turn in a case that has already reshaped U.S.-Venezuela diplomacy more than once in recent years.
The decision comes less than three years after President Joe Biden pardoned Saab as part of a prisoner swap.. It also reverses Venezuela’s long campaign to bring Saab home after his international arrest in 2020. when he was taken into custody following a refueling stop in Cape Verde en route to Iran on what the Venezuelan government described as a humanitarian mission to circumvent U.S.. sanctions.
In a short statement. Venezuela’s immigration authority said the decision was made based on several ongoing criminal investigations in the U.S.. without explicitly saying where Saab was sent.. The statement referred to him only as a “Colombian citizen. ” language that appeared designed to align with Venezuelan law. which prohibits the extradition of its nationals.
The legal tug-of-war around Saab stretches back to his earlier arrest.. After that case, Venezuela’s government submitted to a U.S.. court what it said was Saab’s Venezuelan passport.. Then-Vice President Delcy Rodríguez—now acting President—claimed he was an “innocent Venezuelan diplomat” who had been illegally “kidnapped” while on a humanitarian mission to Iran. framed as a way to circumvent the “immoral. imperial blockade” imposed by the United States.
Saab. 54. amassed a fortune through Venezuelan government contracts. but his standing inside the country appears to have deteriorated after Maduro left office.. Since taking over on Jan.. 3. Rodríguez demoted Saab. firing him from her Cabinet and stripping him of his role as the main conduit for foreign companies looking to invest in Venezuela.
For months, conflicting accounts circulated about whether Saab was imprisoned or under house arrest.. Saturday’s deportation announcement now positions him again at the center of a U.S.. legal process—potentially as a witness against the very leader he long served.. U.S.. authorities say Saab is long described as Maduro’s “bag man. ” and he is now likely to be asked to testify against Maduro. who is awaiting trial on drug charges in Manhattan after being captured in a shock raid by the U.S.. military in January.
The move could also sharpen internal strains within Rodríguez’s coalition.. Rodríguez has generated enormous goodwill in Washington and successfully stalled any talk of new elections as she bends to the Trump administration’s demands to open up its oil and mining industries to American investment.. Those concessions to what Chavistas have long decried as the U.S.. “Empire” have angered many of her more radical. ideologically driven allies. including Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello. who wields influence inside the Venezuelan security forces and faces criminal charges themselves in the U.S.
U.S. prosecutors have been building toward Saab’s latest exposure. The Associated Press reported in February that federal prosecutors have been digging for months into Saab’s role in an alleged bribery conspiracy involving Venezuelan government contracts to import food.
That investigation stems from a 2021 case the Justice Department brought against Saab’s longtime partner, Alvaro Pulido.. The case. centered in Miami. centers on the so-called CLAP program created by Maduro to provide staples—rice. corn flour. cooking oil—to poor Venezuelans struggling to feed themselves amid rampant hyperinflation and a crumbling currency.. Saab is identified in the indictment as “Co-Conspirator 1” and is alleged to have helped set up a web of companies used to bribe a pro-Maduro governor who awarded the business partners a contract to import food boxes from Mexico at an inflated price.
Saab’s legal status has been shaped by the U.S.-Venezuela deal that freed him.. Over the objections of law enforcement. Biden in 2023 agreed to free Saab in exchange for the release of several imprisoned Americans and Venezuela’s return of a fugitive foreign defense contractor known as “Fat Leonard.” The deal came as part of an effort by the Biden White House to roll back sanctions and lure Maduro into holding a free and fair presidential election.
Biden’s pardon of Saab was narrowly tailored to a 2019 indictment—shown by the case number cited in the pardon—related to a contract that Saab and Pulido allegedly won through bribes to build low-income housing units in Venezuela that were never built.
If Saab is returned to U.S.. custody, prosecutors would likely seek to use his cooperation history as well.. The businessman secretly met with the Drug Enforcement Administration before his first arrest.. In a closed-door court hearing in 2022. his lawyers said Saab. for years. helped the DEA untangle corruption in Maduro’s inner circle. and that as part of that cooperation he forfeited more than $12 million in illegal proceeds from dirty business dealings.
Rodríguez had celebrated Saab’s return in 2023 as a “resounding victory” for Venezuela over what she called a U.S.-led campaign of lies and threats.. But some U.S.. lawmakers criticized the prisoner swap.. Several Republicans criticized the deal, including Sen.. Chuck Grassley. of Iowa. who wrote a letter to then-Attorney General Merrick Garland saying history “should remember (Saab) as a predator of vulnerable people.”
Saab is represented in Miami by attorney Neil Schuster, who declined to comment. The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The pattern on Saab is hard to miss: first an international arrest tied to alleged sanctions circumvention. then a U.S.. pardon tied to a narrowly defined 2019 indictment, followed by a return to U.S.. investigative focus as Venezuela points to “several ongoing criminal investigations in the U.S.” and a legal argument about nationality that hinges on whether he can be treated as someone who cannot be extradited.
For now. the case remains poised between competing political and legal timelines—Rodríguez’s post-Maduro reshuffling of influence since Jan.. 3, Maduro’s drug case in Manhattan awaiting trial after the January raid, and U.S.. prosecutors’ work tied to allegations involving bribery connected to contracts and food imports under the CLAP program.. Venezuela’s deportation announcement Saturday closes one chapter of the prisoner-swap aftermath and opens another in the same legal orbit.
The story is part of an investigation that includes the FRONTLINE documentary “Crisis in Venezuela,” which aired Feb. 10, 2026, on PBS. Watch the documentary at pbs.org/frontline, in the PBS App and on FRONTLINE’s YouTube channel.
Alex Saab Venezuela Nicolás Maduro Joe Biden Delcy Rodríguez prisoner swap CLAP program bribery conspiracy Drug Enforcement Administration Manhattan drug charges sanctions