Colombian businessman Alex Saab and the owner of the Venezuelan television channel Globovisión, Raúl Gorrín, close to Nicolás Maduro, were detained and interrogated by Venezuelan agents, five Venezuelan sources and a US official reported. The New York Times.
Venezuelan agents arrested and interrogated the two businessmen, who face money laundering charges in the United States, Tuesday night in Caracas, according to two of the sources.
The US authorities were aware of the arrest, which demonstrates the cooperation between both countries since Donald Trump’s administration ordered the arrest of Maduro in Venezuela to present him before US justice.
However, the situation of both businessmen is not clear. He NYT assures that a representative of Gorrín said that he has been free since Wednesday night. For his part, Saab’s lawyer, Luigi Giuliano, denied that he was detained.
Contradictory versions
On Wednesday, Colombian media claimed that Saab had been arrested. The station Snail Radio reported, citing “intelligence sources in the United States,” that the Colombian “would have been captured in Venezuela for extradition” to that country in an operation with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
The FBI did not deny the information and limited itself to responding “no comment” after being asked by Efe about the operation against the Colombian who had the most power in the Venezuelan government.
The Venezuelan Prosecutor’s Office told Efe that “there is no confirmation of that information,” while Colombian diplomatic sources in Caracas said that “the embassy is not able to confirm that.”
Hours later, the president of the Venezuelan Parliament, Jorge Rodríguez, said he had no information in this regard, after being consulted by the press during a statement at the end of a dialogue meeting with opposition sectors.
One of the Chavista activists who was part of a movement to demand the release of the businessman when he was detained in the United States also denied the new arrest.
“The information is false, I just spoke with him at 2 pm (18:00 GMT),” said Pedro Carvajalino, a member of the Free Alex Saab movement, when responding to a message on X.
Meanwhile, Saab’s wife, Camilla Fabri, who heads the government program Mission Vuelta a la Patria, received on Wednesday at the Simón Bolívar International Airport in Maiquetía, which serves Caracas, a flight with Venezuelan migrants from the United States, according to images broadcast by the private channel Globovisión.
Who is Álex Saab?
Saab was arrested in Cape Verde and extradited to the United States in 2020 accused of money laundering conspiracy and being a front man for the Venezuelan government.
After a pardon from former President Joe Biden, he was released, but in 2024 the US justice system again filed charges against him.
In the Maduro government, Saab became Minister of Industries and National Production in October 2024, but the acting president, Delcy Rodriguezremoved him from office in January.
The two businessmen close to Maduro are the first allies to find themselves in a difficult legal situation since the Trump government began collaborating with that of the interim president of Venezuela, Delcy Rodríguez.
In the weeks that he has been in power, he has modified the country’s oil law to attract American investment, has promoted a general amnesty for prisoners imprisoned since 1999, a period that covers the Chavismo governments, and has proposed converting El Helicoide, a detention center for political prisoners identified by the UN for resorting to torture methods and “generating a climate of fear”, into a social center.
