CARACAS, Venezuela — The government of Qatar announced on Thursday that it successfully acted as a mediator in the latest prisoner swap between the United States and Venezuela’s socialist regime that resulted in the release of Alex Saab, allegedly dictator Nicolás Maduro’s top money launderer.
Saab, a 51-year-old Colombian businessman with deep ties to the Maduro regime, was arrested in 2020 by U.S. law enforcement authorities in Cape Verde after he was indicted in 2019 on charges of laundering $350 million for Venezuela’s state coffers. Saab is also known as Maduro’s “financial brain,” with deep knowledge of the dictator’s shady financial movements and gross misuse of Venezuelan public funding to further the socialist regime’s agenda. Among the most prominent examples of this isthe CLAP program that distributes heavily subsidized boxes of low-quality and often rotten food to Venezuelans.
The Biden administration released Saab on Wednesday, sending him back to Caracas in exchange for roughly ten unjustly arrested Americans and fugitive Leonard Francis, commonly referred to as “Fat Leonard,” who was at the center of a massive corruption scandal in the U.S. Navy.
In a statement given to Qatar News Agency (QNA) on Thursday, Qatar announced its mediator role in the prisoner swap. Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, on behalf of Qatar, thanked both the United States and Venezuela for their “cooperation in making the prisoner swap a success and for their response to the Qatari mediation efforts.”
Sheikh Mohammed also emphasized that the prisioner swap is part of a “broader mediation effort aimed at addressing outstanding issues between the two countries.”
In another statement published to QNA, the Secretary-General of Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Jasem Mohamed Al Budaiwi said that the “success” of Qatar’s mediation between the United States and Venezuela is a “confirmation of its great and prominent diplomatic role and the confidence of the international community in it,” adding that the outcome of the prisoner swap between both countries will be included to Qatar’s “track record of diplomatic successes.”
Maduro received Saab at Venezuela’s Miraflores presidential palace on Wednesday afternoon. The socialist regime’s massive media apparatus provided special coverage all day long of what Maduro celebrated as the “triumph of the truth.”
In a roughly 20-minute mandatory broadcast across all public and private national television channels and radio stations, Maduro welcomed Saab with a hug. Maduro proclaimed December 20 as a “blessed” and “unforgettable” day.
In the broadcast, Maduro described his alleged top money launderer as a “brave and patriotic man who resisted 1,280 days, 40 months, of the most adverse, most painful conditions of kidnapping, filthy jails, physical torture, psychological torture, threats, lies.”
“Justice has triumphed,” Maduro declared.
“We have to talk about so many things, he has faced the hardest trials that a brave man with Palestinian blood has known how to carry on,” Maduro said.
Maduro also claimed — without providing evidence — that Saab’s liberation was “almost ready” during the administration of former President Donald Trump, but that “everything had to be started from scratch” with the Biden administration. The socialist dictator also dedicated a portion of his speech to send a message to U.S President Joe Biden.
“To Biden I say, as I have said to all the presidents and politicians of the United States: Here is Venezuela standing up, with its own model, independent, sovereign, nobody’s colony, we will never be! We are proud Bolivarians, dignified and rebellious, with respect we can advance to a different stage of relations,” Maduro said.
Following Maduro’s speech, Saab said that he feels “proud” of serving the Venezuelan socialist regime, which he described as a “humane government, loyal, that does not abandon, that never gives up.”
“Life is a constant miracle and today the miracle of freedom, of justice, has come true,” Saab asserted. The Colombian businessman continued by describing Maduro’s wife, Cilia Flores, as “the angel of Venezuela.”
“I thought you were going to forget me there,” Saab said to Maduro — to which the socialist dictator replied, “never, never, not in this life nor in all the lives to come.”
Maduro also thanked Qatar for its role as mediator in the prisoner swap with the United States.
“This exchange and the rescue, healthy, alive and free, has shown that hatred, violence and persecution could not,” Maduro wrote on Twitter.
The United States confirmed Qatar’s involvement in a teleconference held on Wednesday.
“We’ve leveraged facilitation by Qatar, as well as other partners, to reach this point that we’ve arrived at today,” an unnamed senior Biden administration official said.
The unnamed senior official stated at a later point in the teleconference, “Qatar has been an important partner for the United States across a whole host of streams, as you’ve undoubtedly seen.”
“But I would say, with regard to the process in Venezuela, for months they facilitated conversations between Maduro authorities and U.S. officials, aimed at clearing a path toward a competitive election in 2024 and the return of wrongfully detained Americans,” the official said. “They have continued to offer their good offices when called upon, and we’re quite grateful for those efforts.”
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.