Former Venezuelan minister Alex Saab pleads not guilty in US money laundering case

Alex Saab, Venezuela's former minister of industry and a close ally of deposed president Nicolas Maduro, pleaded not guilty on Friday to US charges of money laundering and other financial crimes.

Saab, a 54-year-old Colombia-born businessman, was not present for the hearing in a federal court in Miami. His attorneys entered the plea on his behalf and told the news agency about the plea.

He was indicted in May on charges that he ran a network that exploited Venezuela's subsidised food aid programme, known as CLAP. US Assistant Attorney General A. Tysen Duva said at the time that Saab allegedly used American banks to launder hundreds of millions of dollars stolen from a Venezuelan food programme for poor people, as well as proceeds from the illegal sale of Venezuelan oil.

The allegations say Saab acted under Maduro as a front man and money launderer and was granted Venezuelan citizenship and a diplomatic passport in return. Saab had become involved in Venezuelan politics during the final years of Hugo Chavez's presidency, which ran from 1999 to 2013.

The report says Saab was extradited from Venezuela in May. It also says he was first sanctioned by the United States in 2019, arrested in Cape Verde in 2020, extradited to the United States the following year, and released in 2023 as part of a negotiated prisoner exchange with Venezuela.

Maduro appointed Saab as industry minister in 2024. After US forces seized Maduro in a deadly Caracas raid, interim president Delcy Rodriguez dismissed Saab from all his posts.

A federal court in New York ruled Wednesday that Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, will go on trial in the United States in June 2027. They have pleaded not guilty to federal drug trafficking and firearms charges and have been held in a Brooklyn jail for more than seven months.