Padgett: Will Biden's release of accused Venezuelan corruption king backfire? | Opinion

Alex Saab is a big reason tens of thousands of desperate Venezuelans are crowded on the U.S. southern border these days — a big reason, in fact, that Venezuelans are now one of the largest national groups crossing the border illegally.

In other words, Alex Saab is a big reason for America’s border crisis.

In other words, Alex Saab is a big reason President Biden’s re-election poll numbers are so low.

In other words, we need to talk about whether freeing Saab just before Christmas was the smartest thing Biden could have done for Venezuela — and for himself.

If you’re not familiar with Saab, let me assure you he was sitting in a Miami jail cell awaiting trial in a U.S. federal court for very, very good reasons.

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For years, the Colombian-born businessman was allegedly a mastermind of the monstrous corruption perpetrated by Venezuela’s authoritarian socialist regime — and of the laundering of the hundreds of millions of dollars all that corruption ransacked from Venezuela’s economy. As President-Dictator Nicolás Maduro’s embezzlement henchman, Saab helped engineer the worst humanitarian crisis in modern South American history — which has forced a fifth of Venezuela’s population to flee abroad.

That’s because the alleged Saab schemes involved government officials and their business cronies gaming contracts like food imports, public housing construction, oil production and currency exchange – essentials that the country’s micro- and macro-economic life depends on.

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So it’s no exaggeration to suggest Saab shares responsibility for the malnourished Venezuelan refugee children my colleagues and I have watched drift into Colombian border cities like Cúcuta in recent years.

As former U.S. prosecutor Dick Gregorie, who was involved in investigating Saab, told me shortly before Saab was extradited to the U.S. in 2021 from Cape Verde, where he’d been arrested during a flight stopover: “Saab is the master of trade-based money-laundering, and Venezuela has been robbed blind with every transaction that he does.”

Nevertheless, the Biden Administration released Saab on Dec. 20 and sent him back to Venezuela in exchange for 10 Americans who were imprisoned there.

I’ll admit that, as someone who has covered Saab’s intrigues for years — including the fact that a once trusted expert source of mine, former University of Miami professor Bruce Bagley, pleaded guilty in 2020 to actually helping Saab move his crooked cash — I was jolted by news of the Saab swap.

I’m of course glad to know Americans caught in Venezuela’s kangaroo justice system were back home for the holidays. And I understand that Biden felt such U.S. interests outweighed finishing Saab’s prosecution here. Those interests include getting Maduro to hold a fair and transparent presidential election later this year so we can finally see democracy return to Venezuela — and, in turn, persuade all those Venezuelan refugees on our border to go back home, too.

I get that calculation. I just hope Biden comprehends what’s surely going on inside Maduro’s demented head now.

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If the U.S. had traded someone lower on the Venezuelan regime’s larcenous totem pole, I’d be less nervous about the consequences. But because Saab is no less than Maduro’s own top Harry Lime, Maduro is bound to wonder if he’s got more palanca, or leverage, in these negotiations than he first imagined.

The U.S., for example, says that if Maduro doesn’t allow widely popular Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado to face him in this year’s presidential contest, it will re-impose economic sanctions against his regime. Maduro might not take such threats as seriously anymore.

And if he doesn’t, the U.S. — and Biden’s re-election campaign — could end up seeing the Venezuela-driven border crisis worsen even more seriously.

Tim Padgett is the Americas Editor for WLRN, covering Latin America, the Caribbean and their key relationship with South Florida. Contact Tim at tpadgett@wlrnnews.org 

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Padgett: Release of alleged Venezuela corruption king could hurt Biden