MIAMI — A Colombian businessman held in Miami on charges of paying bribes to Venezuelan government officials worked as a confidential informant for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and turned over millions of his profits to the DEA before he failed to surrender in 2019, according to a federal court document unsealed Wednesday.
Alex Saab, 49, who is close to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, started communicating with DEA and FBI agents in Bogota, Colombia, about his planned cooperation in 2016. With his lawyers he continued those discussions with federal agents and prosecutors through June 2018, when he signed a “cooperating source agreement” with the DEA, the court document filed by prosecutors says.
For nearly a year, Saab reported paying bribes to Venezuelan officials to secure illicit food, housing and other contracts totaling hundreds of millions of dollars with the government. Saab communicated with DEA special agents “via telephone, text and voice messaging,” the document says, and he “engaged in proactive cooperation,” meaning he recorded conversations with co-conspirators targeted in the U.S. investigation.
