Venezuela said on 16 May 2026 that it deported Alex Naim Saab Morán, sending the Colombian businessman back toward U.S. custody in a move that revived one of the most politically charged cases tied to Nicolás Maduro’s government. Sources cited by El Tiempo said Saab was removed from El Helicoide prison and taken from Caracas to southern Florida.
The State Department and the Department of Justice supervised the procedure, and the operation reportedly involved FBI and CIA agents. AlbertoNews said Saab was moved under guard from El Helicoide to Simón Bolívar International Airport in Maiquetía, where a Gulfstream aircraft with U.S. registration N550GA landed with a scheduled destination of Opa Locka Executive Airport in Miami.
Venezuela’s migration agency, SAIME, said the deportation was carried out in compliance with Venezuelan migration law. In a statement, it said the government was informing the deportation of “the citizen of Colombian nationality Alex Naim Saab Morán” on 16 May 2026 and said the measure was taken because he is involved in “various crimes in the United States of America.”
The U.S. case against Saab has long centered on allegations that he led money laundering and corruption schemes using Venezuelan state resources. Federal authorities in Miami accuse him of moving hundreds of millions of dollars through public food contracts, especially the CLAP program, and say the charges include criminal conspiracy, money laundering and paying bribes to Venezuelan officials. The accusation in the Southern District of Florida says he falsified documents and used intermediaries to facilitate international transfers of public funds.
Saab has been a familiar figure in the Maduro government’s orbit for years. In 2020, the Venezuelan regime named him its representative to the African Union, a role his defense has cited in arguing that he acted as a special envoy and that his detention violated international diplomatic immunity rules.
His legal odyssey has stretched across several countries and multiple administrations. Saab was extradited from Cabo Verde to the United States in October 2021 and remained in judicial detention until December 2023, when he received a pardon from the government of Joe Biden as part of a prisoner exchange. That pardon allowed him to return temporarily to Venezuela.
Now he is once again at the center of a case that mixes criminal allegations, diplomatic arguments and state power. The latest transfer puts the focus back on what U.S. prosecutors have said from the start: that the network around CLAP was used not just to buy food, but to move money.
