Alex Saab will not plead guilty at Monday’s hearing, says his lawyer

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The Colombian-Venezuelan businessman Alex Saab, linked to the Government of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela and accused of money laundering crimes in the United States, of which according to his lawyer he is going to plead not guilty, has set his second appointment with the United States justice in Miami for this Monday, 1 of November.

Lawyer Henry Bell confirmed to EFE that the 49-year-old Saab, extradited on October 16 from Cape Verde, is not going to admit his guilt, something that would have allowed him to avoid a public trial.

Pleading guilty is the step normally taken by defendants who reach collaboration agreements with the Prosecutor’s Office with a view to achieving softer penalties if they are convicted.

Bail for Saab

The Prosecutor’s Office already advanced in the first hearing its position against being granted bail on the grounds that there is a risk of flight.

Bell did not deny or confirm that the defense will request that measure at the second hearing, but in any case it is a decision that corresponds to the judge in the case, Robert N. Scola.

Saab is charged with seven counts of money laundering and one more of conspiracy to commit that crime.

Since May 2019, more than a year before his capture in Cape Verde due to an order issued through Interpol, the businessman born in Barranquilla (Colombia) has been subject to sanctions from the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) from the United States Department of the Treasury.

Prosecutors believe that he laundered more than $ 350 million to pay for the corruption of the Venezuelan president through the US financial system.

First hearing

The first hearing took place on October 18 before Judge John O’Sullivan amid great expectation, so much so that there were times when there were 350 people connected to the Zoom session, most of them journalists.

Saab appeared virtually from the jail where he has been confined since his arrival in the United States and there were media that violated Rule 53, which prohibits publishing the images of the hearings, so the image of Saab with the orange prison uniform and hair long and loose was massively reproduced.

Saab’s lawyers asked the court to take “reasonable measures to prevent further violations of Rule 53” from now on and made some suggestions in this regard.

Saab doesn’t want more videos

Judge Scola demanded that the Prosecutor’s Office make its opinion on this point known before announcing how it will proceed, but for now there have been no announcements.

Asked by EFE, the lawyer Bell said that “he cannot speak on behalf of the court on how he will now deal with the illegal publication of the Saab images.”

The Venezuelan government, which claims that Saab had diplomatic immunity when he was detained in Cape Verde, showed its rejection of extradition by unilaterally suspending the dialogue it was conducting with the opposition in Mexico.

Saab had previously been appointed in absentia as a government representative in those talks.

While the Venezuelan exile in the United States trusts that Saab will collaborate with the United States justice and thus expose Maduro, official spokesmen from Caracas and the businessman’s wife insist that he will not “bend.”

The government of Democratic President Joe Biden has upheld the decision taken during the presidency of Donald Trump (2017-2021) to ignore the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, as president and has corroborated the recognition of the opposition Juan Guaidó as interim president.

Nor has it modified the filing of charges for narco-terrorism against the Venezuelan president made in 2020, nor the offer of 15 million dollars for any information that leads to his capture.