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Alex Saab

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Not to be confused with Saab Automobile.
Alex Saab
Portrait of Alex Saab
Born
Alex Nain Saab Morán

(1971-12-21) December 21, 1971 (age 52)
Barranquilla, Colombia
NationalityColombian
CitizenshipVenezuelan[1]
Antiguan[2]
OccupationBusinessman
Known forClose relationship with the Venezuelan government of Nicolás Maduro

Alex Nain Saab Morán (Arabic: أليكس صعب; born 21 December 1971)[3] is a Colombian businessman[4] of Lebanese descent.[5] Saab was the subject of journalistic investigations for conducting businesses estimated at US$135 million with the Venezuelan government,[6] while other Colombian businessmen had stopped exporting to Venezuela due to uncertainty regarding payments and tight exchange controls.[7] Saab's name also appears in the Panama Papers and the FinCEN Files.[8][9]

Saab was enriched by the materials supplier business of the Housing Mission in Venezuela. Armando.Info, a Venezuelan investigative journalist outlet, reported that Saab received US$159 million from the Venezuelan government to import housing materials between 2012 and 2013, but only delivered products worth US$3 million.[10] He later sold food to Venezuela for more than US$200 million in a contract signed by President Nicolás Maduro.[11][12] The food was later resold in Venezuela for 112% more than its original price.[13]

Saab has been investigated by Colombian authorities for allegedly laundering US$25,000 million between 2004 and 2011. On 8 May 2019, the Office of the Attorney General of Colombia indicted Saab with charges of money laundering, concert to commit crimes, illicit enrichment, fictitious exports and imports, and aggravated fraud for events related to his Shatex company.[14] During the course of these investigations, his accounting auditors were arrested and charged by the prosecutor's office.[15]

During a fuel stop at Cape Verde, Alex Saab was arrested while on his way from Iran to Venezuela on a business jet on 12 June 2020. Saab was arrested in accordance to an Interpol red notice in relation to his indictment in United States, accused of money laundering.[16][17] Saab's extradition to the United States was approved by the Barlovento Appeals Tribunal, Cape Verde's Supreme Court of Justice and its Constitutional Court.[18][19][20]

The Venezuelan government denied or ignored any relationship with Saab for years,[21][22] but after his arrest in Cape Verde it started deploying a support campaign in favour of Saab and to prevent his extradition, using government social media accounts and filling Caracas with billboards, murals and graffitis asking for his release,[23] organizing demonstrations in his support,[24][23][25] and starting a YouTube series about him.[26]

He was extradited to the United States on 16 October 2021 and charged with eight counts of money laundering, accused of moving $350 million out of Venezuela into accounts controlled in the United States and other countries, facing up to twenty years in prison.[27][28] Maduro's government suspended negotiation talks with the opposition as a response.[29]

Career

Alex Saab is the son of a Lebanese immigrant who settled in the city of Barranquilla and opened various businesses, finding success in Colombia's textile industry.[30]

Saab began his career in Barranquilla,[when?] selling business promotional keychains and subsequently work uniforms.[31] Saab joined a group of Colombian businessmen who were exporting merchandise to Colombia from Venezuela using the CADIVI currency system.[when?][32] According to a Univisión source, during this time[when?] Saab accumulated million dollar debts after the suspension of foreign exchange payments by the Venezuelan government, which in turn alleged that some businessmen in the country had cheated millions from the Cadivi system, although Saab was not accused of such fraud.[33] Saab sued Univisión's journalist Gerardo Reyes in the US after Reyes reported on these issues.[33][34]

Saab was also enriched due to the materials supplier business of the Housing Mission in Venezuela. According to the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), in 2009 Saab and his business partner Álvaro Pulido won "an overvalued government contract to build 25,000 units of low-income housing for three or four-times the worth of the original construction cost."[35] From 2011, Saab worked with Maduro's stepsons, Walter, Yosser and Yoswal, known as Los Chamos, because of their access to Maduro and former Vice President Tareck El Aissami, to secure government contracts.[35]

On 28 November 2011, Saab's Bogota-based company Fondo Global de Construccion (Global Construction Fund) signed an agreement with the Venezuelan government,[36][10] which resulted in a contract of US$685 million for the construction of prefabricated homes in Venezuela as part of la Gran Misión Vivienda housing programme,[31] while the organization was being investigated by the Ecuadorian government for alleged money laundering through false exports to Venezuela.[32] The signing was attended by presidents Juan Manuel Santos and Hugo Chávez,[36][10] and Venezuela's then Foreign Minister Nicolás Maduro. Saab's lawyer, Abelardo De La Espriella, said that Saab had no connection with the Global Construction Fund.[32][10] Armando.Info, a Venezuelan investigative journalist outlet, reported that Saab received US$159 million from the Venezuelan government to import housing materials between 2012 and 2013, but only delivered products worth US$3 million.[10]

Saab used the services of Mossack Fonseca, the legal firm at the center of the Panama Papers offshore financing scandal, to create companies abroad.[8][37][38] Among these were Seafire Foundation, Lintel Overseas and PI Proment International Sociedad Anónima Kingstone Team Inc. Saab's lawyer said none of these companies were ever used.[31] Among the companies there also was Group Grand Limited, of which Saab was co-owner of and was used to supply food to the Local Committees for Supply and Production (CLAP) programme.[37][11]

In August 2015, a tiny trucking and trading firm, Trenaco, headquartered in Switzerland but largely run out of Colombia, won a contract from Petroleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA), worth around $4.5 billion, for a drilling project in the Orinoco Belt, the world’s largest crude oil reserve. After complaints from PDVSA's foreign partners, including Chevron and Rosneft, the deal collapsed by the start of 2016.[36] Trenaco executives told Reuters that Saab had ran the company since 2012-14. The company shared an address with Fondo Global, and executives said Saab worked alongside Carlos Gutiérrez, the son of a Colombian agricultural magnate, and Colombian businessman Alvaro Pulido.[36]

Local Committees for Supply and Production (CLAP)

Main article: Local Committees for Supply and Production

The Local Committees for Supply and Production (CLAP) programme, established in 2016, imports food for the poor in Venezuela in the context of the country's food shortages. Saab had sold food to Venezuela for more than US$200 million in a contract signed by President Nicolás Maduro through a registered company in Hong Kong, China.[11][12] On 23 August 2017, the former Venezuelan attorney general, Luisa Ortega Díaz, said Alex Saab was the co-owner of the Mexican firm supplying food to CLAP, Group Grand Limited, along with Álvaro Pulido and Rofolfo Reyes, who Ortega claimed was "presumably President Nicolás Maduro". The food supplies have been sold through Group Grand Limited for 112% more than the original price in Mexico.[13] Saab would have met Pulido in 2012, when he was dedicated to supplying the Saab company, but this activity would have stopped doing it in 2014.[39][clarification needed]

In 2018, the Venezuela government began paying for the CLAP imports using its gold resources. The US Treasury said the government was pressuring miners to sell Saab gold at an inflated market rate. "The gold would be flown to the United Arab Emirates and Turkey. Saab’s company, Mulberry, based in Turkey, allegedly would help facilitate payments for the selling of gold and goods back to Venezuelan clients."[35]

Armando.info investigation

In April and September 2017 four investigative journalists published reports in Venezuelan web portal Armando.info about inflated food prices within the CLAP initiative, exposing Saab's relationship with the Venezuelan government.[34][33] The first report showed Saab's connections to Hong Kong based Grupo Grand (including the listing of his son as a beneficiary and the company sharing an address with another of Saab's enterprises; Saab rejected the allegations) and that it charged the Venezuelan government prices far above the market rate. The second report investigated Luisa Ortega's allegations about the CLAP programme.[40] A joint report between the Central University of Venezuela and Armando.info showed that milk powder supplied by Saab's company was not nutritious, having high levels of sodium and low levels of calcium only 1/41 the protein of normal milk.[41][42][43]

Following the publication, Armando.info and the journalists were threatened and had their personal information shared on social media, and Saab brought a lawsuit alleging continued defamation of reputation and aggravated injury charges, which carry a prison sentence of up to six years, leading the reporters to flee Venezuela.[44][34][40]

On 11 September 2018, the National Commission of Telecommunications (CONATEL) of Venezuela banned the Armando.info journalists from publishing information about Saab.[45][46] In a document addressed to the journalist Roberto Deniz [es] and signed by the general director of CONATEL, Vianey Miguel Rojas "forbids citizens Roberto Denis Machín, Joseph Poliszuk, Ewald Scharfenberg and Alfredo José Meza to publish and disseminate mentions that go against the honor and reputation of the citizen Alex Naím Saab" through digital media, specifically on the site Armando.info, "until the end of the current process in the case being pursued against said citizens".[47][48][49] The ban was denounced by the Venezuelan National Press Workers' Union (SNTP). Since the reports, the Armando.Info site suffered massive cyber attacks, warning that the ban on mentioning Saab in successive investigation articles "increases the threat". Roberto Deniz rejected the sentence, recalling that after the publications the journalistic team had been threatened via Twitter and banned from leaving the country by the 11th Court in Caracas.[50][47][48][49]

Swiss investigation

In September 2020 authorities in Liechtenstein started investigating Alex Saab on embezzlement charges related to CLAP public funds, sending a request for assistance to Switzerland.[51][52] On 14 September, United States authorities froze accounts in Liechtenstein belonging to Saab worth US$700 million.[53]

Operación Alacrán

Main article: Operación Alacrán

On 1 December, the website Armando.info published an investigation reporting that nine members of the opposition National Assembly mediated in favor of two businessmen linked with the government and the controversial Local Committees for Supply and Production (CLAP) program. The investigation reported that the implicated lawmakers had written letters of support to the United States Treasury and others to a Colombian man named Carlos Lizcano, who authorities were investigating over his possible links to Alex Saab, another Colombian associated with the food distribution program and under United States sanctions. According to Armando.info, the lawmakers wrote the letters despite being aware of evidence that tied Lizcano to Saab.[54] In addition, the portal pointed to José Brito as one of those implicated in alleged acts of corruption to "cleanse the reputation" of Colombian businessmen linked to the government of Nicolás Maduro and the network of embezzlement of social assistance funds of the Local Committees for Supply and Production (CLAP).[55][56][57]

Book

Colombian journalist Gerardo Reyes, Pulitzer Prize recipient and Univisión's investigation team director, published his book Alex Saab with the Editorial Planeta [es], based on 120 interviews. Reyes described Saab as a "super minister", saying that he had more tasks than any other member of Maduro's cabinet, and has written that the United States calculates that Saab's profits from the Venezuelan government are over a billion dollars.[58]

Criminal investigations and arrest

DEA investigation

In 2016, Reuters reported that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) had been investigating companies owned by Saab and Álvaro Pulido on suspicion of money laundering from the illegal trafficking of cocaine from Colombia.[36]

2018 foiled arrest operation

The Colombian Prosecution and the Directorate of Criminal Investigation and Interpol (DIJIN) issued arrest warrants on 24 September 2018 against seven people, including Alex Saab, charged with asset laundering worth US$25 billion between 2004 and 2011, and planned to carry out an operation the following day. However, the operation was foiled after Eddie Andrés Pinto, a patrolman of the DIJIN who served as an interception analyst, alerted several members of the group about their arrests. As a response, Alex Saab escaped to Venezuela and his brothers, Luis Alberto and Amir, disconnected their cellphones and the authorities lost their track. After an investigation, a tip by an anonymous informant and an extortation complaint filed by a trusted person by Saab, the Colombian authorities identified Andrés Pinto as responsible; on 11 October he was arrested in Bogotá and indicted by the Prosecution with bribery and illegal violation of communications or correspondence of an official nature.[clarification needed] Pinto announced his intention to collaborate with the authorities. At the moment it was unknown if the indicted group and Saab contacted the DIJIN to leak information regarding the operation or if they were subject of extortion, and the Prosecution was evaluating if Pinto received benefits in exchange of the provided information. On 23 September 2018, one of Saab's lawyers filed a complaint with the prosecution for attempted extortion of from a public official "who is providing confidential information about investigative proceedings against the Saab family using WhatsApp and Telegram messages, in exchange for some economic or labor purpose.”[59] On 12 October, Andrés Pinto accepted the extortion charges that were indicted against him. According to the complaint in the audios and WhatsApp captures provided therein, Pinto requested COP 500 million in exchange for erasing all the information that existed on behalf of Saab, stating that "there was nothing that compromised Saab or his family", but that they "were going to be captured as a measure of pressure".[60]

Colombian, US and Swiss criminal charges

On 8 May 2019, the Colombian prosecutors office charged Saab with crimes of money laundering, a concert to commit crimes, illicit enrichment, exports and fictitious imports and an aggravated fraud for events related to his Shatex company. Since September 2018, he is considered a fugitive in Colombia for failing to attend any judicial proceeding even with a firm arrest warrant.[14]

On 25 July 2019, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Florida charged Saab and Pulido with money laundering of up US $350 million related to a 2011-15 scheme to pay bribes to take advantage of Venezuela's government-set exchange rate.[61][10]

In March 2021, after three years of investigation, Swiss prosecutors concluded that there was insufficient evidence to prosecute Saab for money laundering.[62]

US and UK sanctions

On 25 July 2019, the United States Department of the Treasury imposed sanctions on 10 people and 13 companies (from Colombia, Hong Kong (China), Mexico, Panama, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and the U.S.) in "CLAP", which includes Nicolas Maduro's stepsons and Saab. According to a statement by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, "The corruption network that operates the CLAP program has allowed Maduro and his family members to steal from the Venezuelan people. They use food as a form of social control, to reward political supporters and punish opponents, all the while pocketing hundreds of millions of dollars through a number of fraudulent schemes."[63][35]

The Maduro government rejected the sanctions, calling it sign of "desperation" by "the gringo empire." Maduro said "Imperialists, prepare for more defeats, because the CLAP in Venezuela will continue, no one takes the CLAP away from the people."[61] A statement from the Venezuelan foreign ministry "denounces the repeated practice of economic terrorism by the US government against the Venezuelan people, announcing measures whose criminal purpose is to deprive all Venezuelans of their right to food."[64]

According to Armando.Info, as a result of US investigations and sanctions, Saab moved his shell companies to Turkey.[10]

In July 2021 the United Kingdom issued a series of sanctions that included Saab, which included the freezing of assets and travel bans. Álvaro Enrique Pulido, identified as Saab's associate, was also sanctioned, in both cases for ""exploiting two of Venezuela's public programs that were established to provide poor Venezuelans with affordable food and housing", saying that "They both benefited from improperly awarded contracts, in which promised goods were delivered at highly inflated prices. Their actions caused more suffering to Venezuelans who were already in poverty for their own private enrichment."[65][66]

Arrest

2020 detention

On 12 June 2020, en route from Iran to Venezuela on a business jet, Alex Saab was arrested during a fuel stop at Cape Verde. Saab was arrested in accordance to an Interpol red notice in relation to his indictment for money laundering in the United States. The Venezuelan government stated the red notice had been issued a day after Saab was detained.[16][17] Venezuela's foreign ministry said the Venezuelan government had employed Saab to obtain food, medicine and other humanitarian goods to help Venezuela combat the COVID-19 pandemic.[17] After his arrest, Venezuela said Saab was a Venezuelan diplomat who was on a "humanitarian mission" to Iran to organise the exchange of Venezuelan gold for Iranian gasoline, an argument rejected by Cape Verde's Barlavento Court of Appeal.[67] While no extradition treaty exists between Cape Verde and the U.S.,[68] legal experts have argued that Cape Verde is part of United Nations conventions that compel the country to comply with an Interpol red notice, regardless of the date when it was issued.[69]

The US deployed the Navy cruiser USS San Jacinto off Cape Verde from November to December 2020, on a secret mission to "deter Venezuela and Iran from plotting to spirit Mr. Saab away from the island". The New York Times reported that "hard-liners at the Justice and State Departments, including Elliott Abrams, the State Department's special envoy for Iran and Venezuela" were worried that Iranian or Venezuelan operatives could help Saab escape and that the US would "lose an unusual opportunity to punish Mr. Maduro".[70]

Saab said in a June 2021 CNN interview that he had been tortured by the authorities in Cape Verde.[71]

In August 2020, Saab asked Cape Verde's Prime Minister, Ulisses Correia e Silva, to release him.[72] The Russian government criticised the detention of Saab and the extradition request.[73]

Saab's wife, Italian model Camila Fabbri, moved to Moscow with her family in early 2021.[74]

The Constitutional Court of Cape Verde heard the parties on 13 August 2021, after Alex Saab's lawyers appealed the decision of the country's Supreme Court of Justice to authorize his extradition to the United States.[75]

Support campaign

Shortly after his detention, on 14 June, the foreign affairs minister appointed by Maduro, Jorge Arreaza, tweeted in support of Alex Saab, labeling his arrest as "arbitrary" and "illegal".[76][77] Journalist Roberto Deniz [es] expressed surprise by the declaration, saying that after years denying or ignoring its relationship with Saab, the government now called him a "government agent" and a "Venezuelan citizen".[21][78]

After Alex Saab's detention, the Venezuelan government started deploying a support campaign in favour of Saab, using government social media accounts and filling Caracas with billboards, murals and graffitis to ask for his liberation. The government designed a communication campaign to build an alternative narrative of Saab's affair, showing him as an ally entrepreneur with diplomatic powers that with his efforts had managed to evade economic sanctions and made possible the arrival of food and industrial parts to Venezuela.[23] In February 2021, the Venezuelan government organized a concert in support of Alex Saab in Caracas' Diego Ibarra Square,[23][25] asking for his release. Two ruling party deputies visited Nigeria's embassy in Venezuela, also asking for his liberation.[25]

The same month, employees of Salva Foods, which operates in La Guaira Port and imports and assembles CLAP boxes, said that they were threatened by the company's board with massive layoffs and labor benefits removal if they refused to participate in videos or protests to demand the release of Saab, who is connected to the company.[79]

On 25 August 2020, the Attorney General of Cape Verde opened an investigation into two men who posed as representatives of the Cape Verde government and travelled to Venezuela to discuss Saab's case with President Maduro.[80]

An intelligence report accessed by the Financial Times in early 2021 analysed more than half a million Twitter posts related to Alex Saab and concluded that Nicolás Maduro's administration "and/or its proxies (witting or unwitting) are involved in a coordinated campaign to influence both the government of Cape Verde and its population to obstruct Alex Saab's extradition".[81]

As a response to a BuzzFeed News and the Digital Africa Research Lab (DigiAfricaLab) investigation, Twitter suspended over 1,500 accounts in April 2021 for manipulating the #FreeAlexSaab hashtag, a hashtag used since mid-January as part of a campaign by a Nigerian public relations firm and a United Kingdom-based nonprofit called Digital Good Governance for Africa that paid influencers to tweet about Saab in an effort to sway public opinion and court proceedings in Nigeria and Cape Verde.[82]

In June 2021, the platform Cazadores de Fake News concluded that a marketing company called PromoCoreGH was leading an astroturfing campaign in Ghana in support of Saab, after analyzing 151 725 tweets and fifty Twitter accounts.[83][84]

In June 2021, the Venezuelan government started a YouTube series dedicated to Saab.[26] In 17 October 2021 it organized a demonstration in support of Saab.[24]

Extradition process and legal battle, 2020-21

The Madrid-based law firm of former Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón will represent Alex Saab in the extradition case.[85] Saab's defense team said that Saab "is the key figure for the U.S. in their plan to overthrow Nicolás Maduro and keep suffocating the Venezuelan people"[86] and that Saab was on a mission to Iran as a special envoy of Maduro to negotiate fuel and humanitarian supplies at the time of his arrest.[86]

On 30 November 2020, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Court of Justice ordered Cape Verde to grant house arrest to Alex Saab.[87] On 15 December, the Cape Verde Court of Appeals ruled to refuse the decision, arguing that ECOWAS Court lacks the jurisdiction to force Cape Verde to take decisions.[88] Cape Verde also asked the ECOWAS Court to rescind the decision.[89]

On 29 December, Nicolás Maduro appointed Alex Saab as ambassador to the African Union, seeking to send Saab to Ethiopia and to prevent his extradition.[90] On 5 January 2021, the Cape Verde Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Alex Saab's extradition.[18] On 21 January, authorities of Cape Verde announced that his transfer to house arrest was approved.[91] Experts consulted by Voice of America declared that after the decision, the risk of his escape increased "exponentially".[92]

On 22 February 2021, the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida denied a request to cancel Saab's extradition request to the United States.[93]

On 15 March 2021, the ECOWAS Court of Justice ruled against Saab's extradition and ordered that he be freed because he was detained before the Interpol Red Notice was issued. It ordered Cape Verde to pay Saab 200,000 euros in compensation. Decisions of the Court of Justice are binding, but the court does not have the authority to enforce its judgements in member states, including Cape Verde.[67][94] On 17 March, Cape Verde's Supreme Tribunal approved Saab's extradition request.[19] Cape Verde later asked the ECOWAS to nulify the decision in favor of Alex Saab.[95]

In June 2021, the United Nations Human Rights Committee asked Cape Verde to suspend Saab's extradition and to ensure he has access to specialised medical care chosen by him. The committee said it wanted time to analyse Saab's case.[96][68][97][98] Cape Verde's Supreme Tribunal rejected the UN committee's request in a 39 pages-long decision, ruling that "Cape Verde is not forced to comply with the request" and that "sufficiently persuasive reasons to justify its reception do not exist". The Tribunal's three judges considered that the requests to the different Member States of the committee "are part of a constructive dialogue" that does not imply "any relationship of subordination", but rather of "complementarity", writing in the ruling that "This body presents its interpretation, which the State considers and responds if it freely deems it necessary to diverge with them". The justices also suggested that the committee did not have knowledge about Saab's record.[99] In response, Saab's lawyer said the court had made a legal, strategic, and ethical mistake and was "send[ing] a clear message to the world that it can exercise its sovereignty to violate human rights while ignoring the norms of international human rights law to which it has subscribed".[100]

On 6 August 2021, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit agreed to hear an appeal by Saab's defence team, which was seeking to have the US courts recognise his diplomatic immunity. The US was required to lodge a response within 30 days.[101]

In August 2021, Saab's defence team asked that the site of his detention be moved from the island of Sal to Praia. It said Saab's health had deteriorated and that he needed access to specialist medical care for his cancer. On 1 September 2021, the Barlavento Court of Appeal granted Saab's request. Saab's defence team asked the Cape Verde courts to refuse Saab's extradition on the grounds that there were legal irregularities associated with his arrest. By September 2021, the request had reached the Cape Verde Constitutional Court.[102] Before the extradition final ruling took place, Saab's defence team sent letters of support, allegedly from a Catholic bishop near Boston; such dioceses did not exist in Massachusetts. The letters were authored by Rev. Ramos Teixeira, part of a small Massachusetts-based denomination named 'Catholic Church on the Americas', which is not connected to the actual Roman Catholic Church.[103][104]

On 8 September 2021 the Constitutional Tribunal of Cape Verde rejected Saab's defence appeal and approved Saab's extradition to the United States on money laundering charges. The 194 pages-long ruling agreed with the decision of two lower courts, the Barlovento Appeals Tribunal and the Supreme Tribunal of Justice, who had authorized the extradition on 2020 and March 2021, respectively, as well as supported the position of Cape Verde's government.[20][105][106]

Jorge Rodríguez, Speaker of the ruling party majority National Assembly and head of the government delegation of the talks with the opposition in Mexico, declared on 15 September that Alex Saab had been incorporated to the negotiations.[107]

Saab's legal defense was estimated to have costed $170 million dollars.[108][109][110]

Saab was extradited to the United States on 16 October 2021[111][112][113][114][27] and charged with eight counts of money laundering, accused of moving $350 million out of Venezuela into accounts controlled in the United States and other countries, facing up to twenty years in prison.[28]

Maduro's government pulled out of negotiation talks with the Venezuelan opposition mediated by Norway taking place in Mexico, having made Saab's participation in the official team a condition of the negotiations.[10][29]

See also

References

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  2. ^ "Cabinet cuts ties with controversial Colombian". The Daily Observer. 29 April 2019. Retrieved 16 June 2020.
  3. ^ "Barranquillero Álex Saab es socio de Maduro: exfiscal Ortega". El Heraldo (Colombia). 23 August 2017. Retrieved 11 January 2020.
  4. ^ "Capturan al revisor fiscal y al contador de empresas de Alex Saab". El Espectador (in Spanish). Colombia. 10 October 2018. Retrieved 11 October 2018.
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  76. ^ "Venezuela denuncia la detención arbitraria e ilegal del ciudadano venezolano, Alex Nain Saab, por parte de Interpol, cuando se encontraba en tránsito en la República de Cabo Verde, sumándose a las acciones de agresión, bloqueo y asedio de EEUU contra nuestro país". Twitter (in Spanish). Retrieved 2021-03-15.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
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  78. ^ "El chavismo pasó años negando su relación u omitiendo su relación con Alex Saab para ahora decir que es "agente" del Gobierno, que es "ciudadano venezolano" y que casi que es un emisario humanitario. Increíble, pero cierto!". Twitter (in Spanish). Retrieved 2021-03-15.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
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  103. ^ Kurmanaev, Anatoly (13 August 2021). "As the final ruling on Alex Saab's extradition nears, his defense sends letters of support from an alleged Catholic bishop near Boston. "We're all Alex Saab..., we are in chains as long as he is," writes Rev. Ramos Teixeira. There is no such Catholic bishop or such dioceses in MA". Twitter. Retrieved 2021-09-11.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  104. ^ Kurmanaev, Anatoly (13 August 2021). "Ramos Teixeira appears to be part of a small denomination based in a residential house in suburban Boston called the "Catholic Church of the Americas," which is not connected to the actual Roman Catholic Church. He didn't respond to request for comment". Twitter. Retrieved 2021-09-18.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
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  108. ^ "Afirman que la defensa de Alex Saab ha costado 170 millones de dólares". El Nacional (in Spanish). 2021-03-18. Retrieved 2021-10-19.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
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