Maduro ally met with US prior to arrest

MIAMI (AP) – A businessman accused of skimming millions of state contracts from Venezuela secretly met with U.S. law enforcement agencies to provide information against Nicolás Maduro’s administration before being charged with money laundering in 2019, according to new Records in a related case against a disgraced professor at the University of Miami.

Bruce Bagley, who was a top organized crime expert in Latin America prior to his 2019 arrest, will be convicted of money laundering next week in Manhattan federal court on two counts related to payments of nearly $ 3 million made by the Businessman Alex Saab.

In a petition for leniency, Bagley’s attorney argued that his client was told that the payments, the majority of which he had transferred to an unnamed intermediary’s bank account, were concealing payments to lawyers in the United States who accompanied Saab to meetings where he was Secret service information about the Venezuelan government was allegedly made available.

“It is undisputed,” wrote attorney Peter Quijano in a difficult-to-edit 27-page conviction memorandum filed on Wednesday that Saab and the intermediary “invented this transfer method to hide Saab’s payments to US attorneys from prying eyes.” Venezuela.”

Saab was extradited from Cape Verde to the US last month after a bitter legal battle that has strained Washington and Caracas relations.

The US has described Saab as the main channel of corruption in Venezuela, someone who made huge unexpected profits from seedy food import contracts while millions starved in the South American nation. The Maduro administration considers him a diplomat who was “kidnapped” during a humanitarian mission made more urgent by US sanctions.

It is not clear what was discussed at the previously unreported meetings, nor whether Saab offered meaningful assistance or simply used the opportunity to sniff information about the US investigation into its own activities.

But Bagley’s statement harks back to the report of three people familiar with the Saab investigation, who said he met with U.S. law enforcement officials, including Drug Enforcement Administration agents, multiple times in Colombia and Europe prior to his 2019 indictment Three people spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss the meetings.

US prosecutors and investigators often meet with criminal suspects outside of the US when they want to recruit them to serve a larger target in exchange for pledges of confidentiality and indulgence.

But any meetings Saab attended would have been fraught with great risks for the Colombia-born businessman, given his close ties to Venezuela’s ruling elite, including Maduro’s own family.

The Miami federal prosecutor charged Saab in 2019 on money laundering allegations related to an alleged bribery program that raised more than $ 350 million for the Venezuelan government from a low-income housing project.

Regardless, Saab was sanctioned by the previous Trump administration for allegedly using a worldwide network of mailbox companies – in the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Hong Kong, Panama, Colombia and Mexico – to hide huge profits from overrated foods through Kickbacks and kickbacks received contracts. Several of his employees, including a long-time business partner and a former governor close to the government, were charged last month with involvement in the alleged scheme.

Some of Saab’s contracts were obtained by paying bribes to the adult children of Venezuelan first lady Cilia Flores, the Trump administration claimed when it announced the sanctions. Commonly known in Venezuela as “Los Chamos”, slang for “the children”, the three children of Flores from a previous relationship have been under investigation by the Miami prosecutor for several years.

Henry Bell, a Saab attorney, did not immediately respond to an email asking for comment. The US prosecutor in Miami, which is involved in the investigation against Saab, declined to comment.

Bagley’s role in Saab’s alleged transplant network appears to have been relatively minor.

Saab initially hired Bagley to get a student visa for his son and later sought advice on investing in Guatemala, prosecutors said. Then, beginning around November 2017, Bagley began receiving monthly deposits of around $ 200,000 from an alleged food company based in the United Arab Emirates. Additional funds were transferred from an account in Switzerland.

He then transferred 90% of the money to an informant’s accounts, believing it would be passed on to Saab’s US attorneys. But Bagley kept a 10% commission and continued to take the money even after one of his accounts was closed for suspicious activity. In total, he received nearly $ 3 million, according to prosecutors.

The informant’s name has been removed from Wednesday’s judgment memorandum. But in court last year, Bagley identified him as Jorge Luis Hernandez, a longtime US informant on anti-drug cases from his native Colombia, better known by his nickname Boli. He has also served as an intermediary linking Narcos with American defense lawyers.

Bagley, an expert on Colombia’s criminal underworld, testified to Hernandez when he applied for asylum in the United States, arguing that he would be killed if he was deported to Colombia, where he had links to far-right paramilitary groups that were then dominated by drug addiction trafficking along the Caribbean coast.

Over the years, Hernandez Bagley came up with lucrative business proposals to advise top politicians from across Latin America, including Colombian Governor Kiko Gomez with links to far-right militias and an unnamed Paraguayan presidential candidate.

In 2019, Bagley traveled to New York once to meet with Luis Dominguez Trujillo, a presidential candidate from the Dominican Republic and grandson of the former dictator of the Caribbean island, Rafael Trujillo. Little did Bagley know at the time that the meeting was being monitored on the orders of the New York prosecutors.

“But Dr. Bagley, not motivated by the lure of a lot of money, turned down (Boli’s) job offer to work for a seemingly seedy politician, foiling this particular attempt by (Boli) to free a defendant,” Quijano said wrote.

When Bagley finally gave in to Hernandez’s pleas, he thought he was protecting Saab from possible retaliation by powerful officials in Venezuela if they suspect he was cooperating with the United States, Bagley’s attorney said.

“The concern was not that the United States would learn of these payments, but that individuals in Venezuela and the Venezuelan government should discover them,” Quijano wrote. “Saab agreed (Boli) that their financial connection would make a lot of important people in Venezuela nervous, considering he has close ties to some government officials there. For the same reason, Saab could not pay its lawyers in the US directly. ”

However, prosecutors claim that Bagley knew the funds were the product of corruption and that government funds “were ultimately taken away from some of the poorest and most vulnerable people in the world.”

“Yes. It’s corruption,” said Professor Hernandez in a taped conversation from a meeting in December 2018, adding that he knew that Saab was deeply involved in food imports on behalf of the Maduro government Inferior quality products imported at inflated prices and their pockets filled with money. ”

Prosecutors argue that Bagley has not yet shown genuine remorse or fully acknowledged his role in serious criminal activity in statements made to law enforcement agencies. However, they are calling on Judge Jed Rakoff to give a lighter prison sentence than the recommended range of 46 to 57 months due to Bagley’s age – he is 75 – and deteriorating health.

Bagley retired from the University of Miami last year after a long career as a professor of international studies. As a top expert on money laundering and organized crime, he has authored numerous books on the subject, testified before Congress and was regularly hired as an expert witness in court. As part of his leniency application, lawyers disclosed the names of 39 people on whose behalf he had testified in the course of their asylum or immigration proceedings.

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Follow Goodman on Twitter: @APJoshGoodman

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