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Monday, February 24, 2025

US, Venezuela swap prisoners: Maduro ally for 10 Americans, plus fugitive contractor ‘Fat Leonard’

by

431 days ago
20231220
Venezuelan President Maduro, center left, embraces Alex Saab after Saab arrived at Miraflores presidential palace in Caracas, Venezuela, Wednesday, Dec. 20, 2023. The United States freed Saab, who was arrested on a U.S. warrant for money laundering in 2020, in exchange for the release of 10 Americans imprisoned in Venezuela, the Biden administration announced Wednesday. Saab's young daughter Mariam stands in front of him, wife Camila Fabri stands center right, sons Isham, behind, Shadi, right, and Charlotte partially covered behind Shadi. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix)

Venezuelan President Maduro, center left, embraces Alex Saab after Saab arrived at Miraflores presidential palace in Caracas, Venezuela, Wednesday, Dec. 20, 2023. The United States freed Saab, who was arrested on a U.S. warrant for money laundering in 2020, in exchange for the release of 10 Americans imprisoned in Venezuela, the Biden administration announced Wednesday. Saab's young daughter Mariam stands in front of him, wife Camila Fabri stands center right, sons Isham, behind, Shadi, right, and Charlotte partially covered behind Shadi. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix)

Matias Delacroix

The Unit­ed States freed a close al­ly of Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro in ex­change for the re­lease of 10 Amer­i­cans im­pris­oned in the South Amer­i­can coun­try and the re­turn of a fugi­tive de­fense con­trac­tor known as “Fat Leonard” who is at the cen­ter of a mas­sive Pen­ta­gon bribery scan­dal, the Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion an­nounced Wednes­day.

The deal rep­re­sents the Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion’s bold­est move yet to im­prove re­la­tions with the ma­jor oil-pro­duc­ing na­tion and ex­tract con­ces­sions from the self-pro­claimed so­cial­ist leader. The largest re­lease of Amer­i­can pris­on­ers in Venezuela’s his­to­ry comes weeks af­ter the White House agreed to sus­pend some sanc­tions, fol­low­ing a com­mit­ment by Maduro to work to­ward free and fair con­di­tions for the 2024 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion.

Maduro cel­e­brat­ed the re­turn of Alex Saab as a “tri­umph for truth” over a U.S.-led cam­paign of lies, threats and tor­ture against some­one his gov­ern­ment con­sid­ers a Venezue­lan diplo­mat who was il­le­gal­ly ar­rest­ed on a U.S. war­rant.

“Pres­i­dent Biden,” a de­fi­ant Maduro said with Saab at his side for a hero’s wel­come at the pres­i­den­tial palace, “Venezuela stands strong, fol­low­ing its own mod­el. We won’t be any­one’s colony.”

The re­lease of Saab, long re­gard­ed by Wash­ing­ton as a bag­man for Maduro, is a sig­nif­i­cant con­ces­sion to the Venezue­lan leader. For­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s ad­min­is­tra­tion held out Saab as a tro­phy, spend­ing mil­lions of dol­lars pur­su­ing the Colom­bian-born busi­ness­man, at one point even de­ploy­ing a Navy war­ship to the coast of West Africa fol­low­ing his ar­rest in Cape Verde to ward off a pos­si­ble es­cape.

U.S. of­fi­cials said Biden’s de­ci­sion to grant him clemen­cy was dif­fi­cult but es­sen­tial in or­der to bring home jailed Amer­i­cans, a core ad­min­is­tra­tive ob­jec­tive that in re­cent years has re­sult­ed in the re­lease of crim­i­nals who once had been seen as un­trade­able.

The 10 Amer­i­cans re­leased in­clude six who have been des­ig­nat­ed by the U.S. gov­ern­ment as wrong­ful­ly de­tained.

“These in­di­vid­u­als have lost far too much pre­cious time with their loved ones, and their fam­i­lies have suf­fered every day in their ab­sence. I am grate­ful that their or­deal is fi­nal­ly over,” Pres­i­dent Joe Biden said in a state­ment.

The agree­ment al­so re­sult­ed in the re­turn to U.S. cus­tody of Leonard Glenn Fran­cis, the Malaysian own­er of a ship-ser­vic­ing com­pa­ny who is the cen­tral char­ac­ter in one of the largest bribery scan­dals in Pen­ta­gon his­to­ry.

But the ex­change, a ma­jor U.S. con­ces­sion, an­gered many hard-lin­ers in the Venezue­lan op­po­si­tion who have crit­i­cized the White House for stand­ing by as Maduro has re­peat­ed­ly out­ma­noeu­vred Wash­ing­ton af­ter the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion’s cam­paign to top­ple him failed.

In Oc­to­ber, the White House eased sanc­tions on Venezuela’s oil in­dus­try fol­low­ing promis­es by Maduro that he would lev­el the play­ing field for the 2024 elec­tion, when he’s look­ing to add six years to his decade-long, cri­sis-rid­den rule. A Nov. 30 dead­line has passed and so far Maduro has failed to re­verse a ban block­ing his chief op­po­nent, María Co­ri­na Macha­do, from run­ning for of­fice.

Biden told re­porters ear­li­er in the day that, so far, Maduro ap­peared to be “keep­ing his com­ment on a free elec­tion.” Re­pub­li­cans, echo­ing the sen­ti­ment of many in the U.S.-backed op­po­si­tion, said Saab’s re­lease would on­ly em­bold­en Maduro to con­tin­ue down an au­thor­i­tar­i­an path.

“Dis­grace­ful de­ci­sion,” Re­pub­li­can Sen. Mar­co Ru­bio of Flori­da, chair­man of the Sen­ate In­tel­li­gence Com­mit­tee, post­ed on X, the so­cial me­dia plat­form for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter.

The U.S. sanc­tions re­main sus­pend­ed as part of the deal an­nounced Wednes­day. It al­so re­quires Maduro’s gov­ern­ment to re­lease 21 Venezue­lans, in­clud­ing Rober­to Ab­dul, who co-found­ed a pro-democ­ra­cy group with Macha­do more than two decades ago, and dis­miss three ar­rest war­rants.

Among the Amer­i­cans be­hind bars in Venezuela are two for­mer Green Berets, Luke Den­man and Airan Berry, who were in­volved in an at­tempt to oust Maduro in 2019. Al­so de­tained are Eyvin Her­nan­dez, Jer­rel Ken­emore and Joseph Cristel­la, who were ac­cused of en­ter­ing Venezuela il­le­gal­ly from Colom­bia. More re­cent­ly, Venezuela ar­rest­ed Savoi Wright, a 38-year-old Cal­i­for­nia busi­ness­man.

The U.S. has con­duct­ed sev­er­al swaps with Venezuela over the past few years, in­clud­ing one in Oc­to­ber 2022 for sev­en Amer­i­cans, in­clud­ing five oil ex­ec­u­tives at Hous­ton-based Cit­go, in ex­change for the re­lease of two nephews of Maduro’s wife jailed in the U.S. on nar­cotics charges. Like that ear­li­er ex­change, Wednes­day’s swap took place on a tar­mac in the Caribbean is­land na­tion of St. Vin­cent and the Grenadines.

Saab, who turns 52 on Thurs­day, hugged his wife and two young chil­dren as he de­scend­ed the stair­case of a pri­vate jet at the Si­mon Bo­li­var In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port. Al­so present to wel­come him was Venezuela’s first la­dy, Cil­ia Flo­res.

It was a stark re­ver­sal from the scene on an­oth­er tar­mac, in Cape Verde, where he was ar­rest­ed in 2020 dur­ing a fu­el stop en route to Iran to ne­go­ti­ate oil deals on be­half of Maduro’s gov­ern­ment. The U.S. charges were con­spir­a­cy to com­mit mon­ey laun­der­ing tied to a bribery scheme that al­leged­ly si­phoned off $350 mil­lion through state con­tracts to build af­ford­able hous­ing. Saab was al­so sanc­tioned for al­leged­ly run­ning a scheme that al­leged­ly stole hun­dreds of mil­lions in dol­lars from food-im­port con­tracts at a time of wide­spread hunger main­ly due to short­ages in the South Amer­i­can coun­try.

Af­ter his ar­rest, Maduro’s gov­ern­ment said Saab was a spe­cial en­voy on a hu­man­i­tar­i­an mis­sion and was en­ti­tled to diplo­mat­ic im­mu­ni­ty from crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion un­der in­ter­na­tion­al law.

Joseph Schus­ter, a lawyer for Saab, wel­comed his client’s re­union with his fam­i­ly. “We are al­so very hap­py for the Amer­i­can cit­i­zens who will be able to re­join their fam­i­lies for Christ­mas,” he said.

There was no men­tion of Saab’s past se­cret meet­ings with the U.S. Drug En­force­ment Ad­min­is­tra­tion. In a closed-door court hear­ing last year, Saab’s lawyers said that he was for years help­ing that agency un­tan­gle cor­rup­tion in Maduro’s in­ner cir­cle and had agreed to for­feit mil­lions of dol­lars in il­le­gal pro­ceeds from cor­rupt state con­tracts.

But the val­ue of the in­for­ma­tion he shared with the Amer­i­cans is un­known; some have sug­gest­ed it may have all been a Maduro-au­tho­rized ruse to col­lect in­tel­li­gence on the U.S. law en­force­ment ac­tiv­i­ties in Venezuela. What­ev­er the case, Saab skipped out on a May 2019 sur­ren­der date and short­ly af­ter­ward was charged by fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors in Mi­a­mi.

Mean­while, mil­lions of Venezue­lans who have cho­sen to re­main in their coun­try con­tin­ue to live in pover­ty. The min­i­mum wage is about $3.60 a month, just enough to buy a gal­lon of wa­ter. The low wages and high food prices have pushed more than 7.4 mil­lion peo­ple to leave the coun­try.

The deal is the lat­est con­ces­sion by the Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion in the name of bring­ing home Amer­i­cans jailed over­seas, in­clud­ing a high-pro­file pris­on­er ex­change last De­cem­ber when the U.S. gov­ern­ment — over the ob­jec­tions of some Re­pub­li­cans in Con­gress and crit­i­cism from some law en­force­ment of­fi­cials — trad­ed Russ­ian arms deal­er Vik­tor Bout for WN­BA star Brit­tney Griner.

The swaps have raised con­cerns that the U.S. is in­cen­tiviz­ing hostage-tak­ing abroad and pro­duc­ing a false equiv­a­lence be­tween Amer­i­cans who are wrong­ful­ly de­tained abroad and for­eign­ers who have been prop­er­ly pros­e­cut­ed and con­vict­ed in U.S courts.

“What hap­pened to the sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers?” said Juan Cruz, who over­saw the White House’s re­la­tions with Latin Amer­i­ca while work­ing at the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil from 2017-19. “Nor­mal­ly you would have to wait a de­fen­dant to be found guilty in or­der to be able to par­don him for a swap. This is an es­pe­cial­ly bad prece­dent with a Trump 2.0 po­ten­tial­ly around the cor­ner. It in­vites wink­ing and nod­ding from the ex­ec­u­tive.”

But Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion of­fi­cials say se­cur­ing the free­dom of wrong­ful­ly de­tained Amer­i­cans and hostages abroad re­quires dif­fi­cult deal­mak­ing.

Mak­ing this deal more palat­able to the White House was Venezuela’s will­ing­ness to re­turn Fran­cis.

Nick­named “Fat Leonard” for his bulging 6-foot-3 frame, Fran­cis was ar­rest­ed in a San Diego ho­tel near­ly a decade ago as part of a fed­er­al sting op­er­a­tion. In­ves­ti­ga­tors say he bilked the U.S. mil­i­tary out of more than $35 mil­lion by buy­ing off dozens of top-rank­ing Navy of­fi­cers with booze, sex, lav­ish par­ties and oth­er gifts.

Three weeks be­fore he faced sen­tenc­ing in Sep­tem­ber 2022, Fran­cis made an es­cape as stun­ning and brazen as the case it­self as he snipped off his an­kle mon­i­tor and dis­ap­peared. He was ar­rest­ed by Venezue­lan po­lice at­tempt­ing to board a flight from Cara­cas and has been in cus­tody since. —MI­A­MI (AP)

___

Sto­ry by JOSHUA GOOD­MAN, ER­IC TUCK­ER AND REGI­NA GAR­CIA CANO | As­so­ci­at­ed Press

Er­ic Tuck­er re­port­ed from Wash­ing­ton and Gar­cia Cano from Cara­cas, Venezuela. As­so­ci­at­ed Press writ­ers Michael Bal­samo and Jim Mus­t­ian in New York, Julie Wat­son in San Diego and Matthew Lee in Wash­ing­ton con­tributed to this re­port.


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