MIAMI (AP) – A regional court in West Africa ordered the immediate release of a Venezuelan businessman close to President Nicolás Maduro, considering that his arrest in Cape Verde on charges of money laundering in the United States was illegal.
In its decision on Monday, a court belonging to the Economic Community of West African States, or ECOWAS, also instructed Cape Verde to cease all extradition proceedings against Alex Saab and to compensate him for damages of $ 200,000.
It is unclear what impact the three-judge panel’s decision will have on the extradition process against Saab, if any. Cape Verde, which arrested the Colombian businessman in June when his jet made a stopover for refueling on a flight to Iran, had already repudiated the jurisdiction of Nigeria’s court. And an appeals court on the island has already given the go-ahead for his extradition, although the country’s highest court has yet to approve it.
But that happens when Saab prosecutors in the United States were in a federal court in Miami on Monday, arguing that their client is immune to lawsuits as a result of the many diplomatic positions he has held in the Maduro government since 2018.
American officials believe Saab holds several secrets about how Maduro, his family and his top advisers allegedly embezzled millions of dollars in government contracts amid widespread famine in the oil-rich country. At the time of his arrest, he was reportedly traveling to Tehran to negotiate deals for exchanging Venezuelan gold for Iranian gasoline.
The ECOWAS court in its decision largely rejected Saab’s allegations that he enjoyed immunity from prosecution as a special envoy for the Maduro government – the central argument of his US attorney. It should also be noted that Saab was not on the passenger list of the jet registered in San Marino when it made a stopover in Cape Verde, preferring to keep its shuttle mission between two countries strongly sanctioned by the USA a secret.
Instead, he blamed Cape Verde for allegedly not having a Red Alert issued by Interpol when it arrested Saab and said his arrest also violated the country’s laws against arbitrary arrests.
Saab New York-based attorney David Rivkin of Baker & Hostetler argued in federal court on Monday that the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations grants diplomatic immunity to his client, even in transit.
“The government’s position basically amounts to an assertion that no diplomat in the world has a right to immunity unless the State Department accepts his diplomatic status,” said Rivkin.
But federal prosecutors argued that the Vienna Convention regulates only permanent diplomatic missions, not temporary assignments like Saab meetings in Iran. They also note that Saab’s alleged misconduct occurred long before Venezuela granted him diplomatic status in 2018, first as a special envoy for humanitarian aid and last year, after his arrest, as a representative of the African Union based in Ethiopia.
“Any diplomatic status he may have in Iran, the African Union or elsewhere would not protect him from being held responsible for his conduct in the United States,” said Justice Department lawyer Alex Kramer.
Rivkin vehemently rejected the claim, arguing that several letters between Maduro and Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, were sufficient evidence that he was in official government business.
“The bottom line of diplomatic immunity is that you have it while you have it,” he said.
Federal prosecutors in Miami indicted Saab in 2019 on money laundering charges related to an alleged bribery scheme that pocketed more than $ 350 million for a low-income housing project for the Venezuelan government that was never built.
The Trump administration has made Saab’s extradition a top priority, at one point even sending a Navy warship to the African archipelago to keep an eye on the prisoner.
For its part, the Maduro government vehemently opposed Saab’s accusation as a veiled attempt at regime change by the US government and ordered him to resist extradition at all costs. His continued detention is likely to complicate any Maduro effort to seek a new start with the Biden government, as well as the continued imprisonment of several Americans in Caracas, including six Venezuelan-American oil executives and two former Green Berets caught in a failed oil attack. quest to capture Maduro.
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