Nicolás Maduro’s fixer to appear in Miami court on Monday to face corruption charges

Alex Saab, the alleged partner and main fixer of Venezuelan ruler Nicolás Maduro, is scheduled to appear before a U.S. judge in Miami on Monday to face money laundering charges amid growing tensions with the Caracas socialist regime.

Saab, 49, was extradited from Cape Verde on Saturday after his legal team ran out of options to stop his extradition following a 16-month legal battle. The Maduro regime, which claims that the detained Colombian businessman is a Venezuelan diplomat, reacted upon hearing the news by ordering that six American oil executives under house arrest be taken back to prison and by halting its negotiations in Mexico with opposition leaders.

Saab was being held on Saturday at the Miami Federal Detention Center, near the federal courthouse, and will have his first court appearance Monday afternoon, but his arraignment will likely be at a later date.

His lawyers had previously appealed the U.S. extradition request at the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta, arguing that Saab had diplomatic immunity given that he was an official Venezuelan envoy, after a federal district judge had rejected his motion while under detention in Cape Verde, where he also fought the request.

Saab’s lawyers have had a hard time convincing the U.S. and the Cape Verde courts that he is immune from prosecution, concluding that Saab is not really a diplomat. His appeal in the U.S. was also seen as premature given that at the time he was still being held abroad.

Saab’s extradition is only the latest development in a series of cases brought in the U.S. against high-ranking government officials and their business partners charged with money laundering and massive corruption practices that have siphoned out billions of dollars from Venezuela.

But none of the other cases have triggered such a virulent response from the Caracas regime, which paid for a high profile team to attempt to secure his liberation in Cape Verde and has attempted to make his release a precondition to reaching a deal with the United States and the opposition to end the country’s political stalemate.

The intense tug-of-war between the U.S. government and Venezuela over Saab is often portrayed as the product of Maduro’s lingering fear that his eventual extradition could lead to a plea deal that could reveal highly sensitive financial information about his regime, which is accused by Washington of running a drug cartel.

The Colombian businessman was arrested in June last year, after his private jet stopped at the island off the African coast on its way to Iran. The Miami U.S. Attorney’s Office charged Saab and his partner, Álvaro Pulido, with running a corruption and money-laundering network that allowed them to extract $350 million from Venezuelan state coffers and transfer them abroad. If found guilty, they face up to 20 years in prison.

Saab’s extradition did not bode well for six American executives charged with corruption by the Maduro regime. They were picked up by security forces a few hours after news of Saab’s extradition broke in social media.

The executives, known as the Citgo Six, were being held at the headquarters of the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service, Sebin, and were to be transferred to the same cell they were in before they were placed under house arrest. They were sentenced to prison terms after they were accused of signing deals that threatened the future of the Venezuelan U.S.-based refinery company, said their Venezuelan lawyer, María Alejandra Poleo.

In a letter disclosed late Saturday, the families of the Citgo Six and of three former U.S. soldiers also incarcerated in Venezuela pleaded with President Joe Biden to play a more active role in securing the release of the U.S. citizens wrongfully held by Maduro.

“Our loved ones’ situations are not your fault. You did not cause them to be arrested on fraudulent charges, prosecuted behind closed doors and politically convicted. But you are the key to their release. We need your help,” family members said in the letter. “Mr. President, we are frustrated by the lack of action by your administration. The people in charge of protecting and returning wrongfully detained Americans have not even taken the basic first step of directly engaging with the Venezuelans that are holding our loved ones.”

The family members said they have been told by U.S. officials that they plan to engage the regime directly once there is progress at the dialogue process being held in Mexico between Maduro and opposition representatives seeking to put an end to the country’s ongoing political crisis.

But the internal Venezuelan dialogue held in Mexico is fragile. During the last round of talks two weeks ago, Maduro’s delegation did not show up for the start of the talks, almost causing the whole process to collapse.

New signs of the apparent end of the negotiations emerged Saturday, when Maduro’s chief negotiator, Jorge Rodríguez, announced that, in reaction to Saab’s extradition, the team will not participate in the next round of negotiations.

“This illegal and inhumane action, harmful to international law, constitutes a new act of aggression by the government of the United States against the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, given that Alex Saab has been incorporated by our country as a full member of the dialogue process and negotiation that is taking place in Mexico,” Rodríguez said.

Saab’s surprising appointment as a Maduro representative at the negotiating table came as a surprise last month, given that he was under house arrest in Cape Verde awaiting extradition to the U.S.

McClatchy Washington Bureay reporter Michael Wilner contributed in this story.