Saab would be in the custody of the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service (SEBIN).
MIAMI, United States. – The Colombian-Venezuelan businessman Álex Saab “would have been captured” in Venezuela during a joint operation between Venezuelan authorities and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), according to reported this Wednesday Caracol Radio, which attributed the version to “intelligence sources in the United States.”
According to that report, the operation would have occurred at 2:30 in the morning. Caracol Radio added that the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service (SEBIN) “has it in its possession while its shipment to the United States is defined.”
The information was replicated by Reuterswhich noted that Saab “was arrested in Venezuela” and that “several Colombian media” reported it, without referring to immediate public confirmation from Venezuelan or American authorities in that note.
Caracol Radio also maintained that, in the same operation, the Venezuelan businessman Raúl Gorrín, owner of the Globovisión channel, was also detained and sanctioned by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the US Department of the Treasury. Caracol indicated that “both Saab and Gorrín are in the power” of SEBIN “while their extradition to the United States is being discussed.”
The media describes Saab as a “diplomat linked” to Venezuela since 2000 for construction businesses and for his participation in the Local Supply and Production Committees (CLAP) program. It also indicates that the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry maintains that Saab reached “important agreements with Mexican, Turkish, Colombian and other countries” for CLAP, and that in 2018 he was named “special envoy of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela” to carry out “humanitarian work.”
Caracol also recalled that Saab was arrested in Cape Verde in 2020 and later extradited to the United States, where he faced criminal proceedings, and that he was imprisoned from October 2021 to December 2023, when he was released after a presidential pardon from then-president Joe Biden. In addition, he added that, in March 2024, a federal judge in Florida definitively dismissed the charges against Saab.
