Maduro includes Alex Saab in dialogue with Venezuelan opposition and tenses negotiations in Mexico international

The Government of Venezuela has decided to integrate the Colombian businessman Alex Saab, alleged ringleader and economic operator of the Government of Nicolás Maduro, in the dialogue table with the opposition that takes place in Mexico, Jorge Rodríguez, head of the Venezuelan delegation and president of the National Assembly. Saab is required by U.S. justice for alleged money laundering, but Chavismo defends him as a diplomat. “We will immediately officiate the facilitators of the Government of Norway and the accompanying countries and the delegation opposing this decision of the Bolivarian Government,” Rodriguez said from the Assembly’s headquarters in Caracas.

The Venezuelan official has assured that Saab will join as a full delegate before the social table that was approved in the agreement signed in Mexico on Monday, which will deal with the management of the humanitarian crisis and access to vaccines . Saab was arrested in Cape Verde in June last year and since then Chavismo has demanded his release. Prior to his arrest, Chavismo denied that he was his main contractor and kept him in the shadows. Now he considers it essential. The Constitutional Court of Cape Verde decided on August 13 to extradite the businessman to the United States. Saab, however, filed a final appeal alleging that its extradition process began “by applying unconstitutional rules,” which the court ruled unfounded a few weeks ago.

Since his arrest, a maze of lawsuits has run through the case to avoid the extradition of what until then was in the shadows as the most favored contractor by the Venezuelan government, involved in food, oil, coal import business , construction and mining. This week was joined this week by a new request from his lawyers to ask the Court for explanations about the decision and this new letter that Chavismo is playing on the politician to press for release and condition talks with the opposition. This is also Chavismo’s first reaction to the seemingly irreversible approval of Saab’s extradition, following the ruling by the Cape Verdean court on 7 September.

“He is being held in a prison abroad, violating all international regulations of the Geneva agreement, human rights and the right to free trial,” Rodriguez said. “The punishment he was subjected to was perpetrated for having been, precisely, fulfilling functions such as those we are talking about at the moment at the negotiating table in Mexico. He was fulfilling functions to obtain medicines, food for the people of Venezuela in the middle of the fiercest blockade that the history of our country has known “.

Although the Chavismo movement has been totally unexpected, last week Russia, the accompanying country in the dialogue in Mexico, had warned that the imminent surrender of the Colombian businessman to the United States would threaten the agreements. “Washington is, in fact, trying to use Alex Saab as additional leverage on the Venezuelan government. We see this as a serious threat to the parties’ efforts to find mutually acceptable avenues for the future development of this country.” , the Kremlin said in a statement. Although some media interpreted the position as a conditioning of the dialogue, the Russian Government later clarified that they continued to support it.

The capture of Saab put Chavism on the ropes, which immediately undertook an intense campaign to clean up its image, about to designate him as a special government envoy to manage food and fuel and then ascend, all and to be in prison, as a South American country ambassador to the African Union. Nicolás Maduro, however, has never mentioned it in his recurring speeches on television.

Prior to his arrest, the Colombian who gave his first business in Venezuela with a contract to build social housing, signed in 2011 between Juan Manuel Santos and Hugo Chávez, was a total unknown. In fact, in 2017 Saab itself sued four journalists from the Armando Información portal accusing them of defamation when they began revealing their connections as a provider of the CLAP food program, a subsidy created by Maduro through from which overpriced food was imported to serve Venezuelans in the midst of the worst episode of food shortages. Judicial persecution led journalists into exile.

Opposition delegates and the government are due to meet again on November 24, when talks resume in Mexico City. It is not clear how this move can disrupt the discussions from which so far two agreements have emerged: one on the defense of the territory of the Exequibo, which were disputed Venezuela and Guyana two centuries ago, and others on the formation of a table to address the humanitarian crisis.

At the beginning of the negotiations, Chavismo pressured Carlos Vecchio, leader of Voluntat Popular and Guaidó’s ambassador to the United States, to withdraw from the table, according to the same opponent. He was replaced by Freddy Guevara who was in prison for a month before joining the dialogue. A year ago, when Norway made its first attempt to reconcile the parties in Venezuela, the Maduro government withdrew from discussions in Barbados in reaction to a new battery of sanctions from the Trump Administration. No member of the opposition delegation has commented on the announcement of Chavismo. It remains to be seen whether this is an impact to put pressure internationally on the case of the alleged ringleader of Maduro or whether this fully conditions the possibility of agreements to get out of the protracted Venezuelan crisis.

This Tuesday, in a press conference, Joan Guaidó referred to the process in Mexico and assured that they had “a cautious hope” with the result. He also referred to what was said by Russia last week about Alex Saab noting that it did not believe that “Russia, nor any other country in the world wants to defend someone who plays with the hunger of millions.”

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