A businessman who was a close ally of the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, was secretly signed up by the Drug Enforcement Administration as a cooperating source in 2018 and provided agents with information about bribes he paid to Venezuelan officials, according to a US court filing unsealed on Wednesday.
Alex Saab agreed to be an “active law enforcement source” for the DEA and forfeited nearly $10m of his fortune as part of his cooperation agreement with the US, which included several meetings with US law enforcement officials in his native Colombia and Europe.
