Chavismo scores another point. Alex Saab, current Minister of Industry and National Production of Venezuela will recover the properties that had been seized in Colombia. This was established by a judge of Barranquilla when ordering the return of the assets – valuable in more than … 8 million dollars – because the Prosecutor’s Office “failed to demonstrate that the assets questioned are constituting an unjustified economic increase,” the judicial office explained.
Saab’s properties, which include a mansion of 4,000 square meters, had been confiscated by the Prosecutor’s Office in 2021, after being accused of making fictitious imports and exports for a value of more than 5 million euros. However, in May 2024, another judge acquitted him of this complaint.
Alex Saab was arrested in 2020 when the plane in which he intended to move from Caracas to Tehran made a scale in Cabo Verde to refuel gasoline. The authorities of that African archipelago arrested him because he was accused of several crimes and had an arrest warrant. The Colombian Prosecutor’s Office had charged him in 2019 for crimes of money laundering, concert to commit crimes, illicit enrichment, fictional exports and imports aggravated by the scandal of his Shatex company. A company that had used, according to the Colombian Prosecutor’s Office, to defraud the State and bleach money.
After his arrest, and after several legal battles, Saab was extradited to the United States, and there he spent two years imprisoned. Until it was inexplicably released by the Biden administration. When Saab finally returned to Caracas, Maduro rewarded him with a ministry.
Hypothesis, do not test
«There is no factual evidence legal foundation that supports the theory that there were unusual foreign trade operations. The import operations carried out by Shatex follow the behavior of imports of raw materials carried out by companies in the import and export market of clothing, ”said Saab’s lawyer in 2024. And under those premises, a judge disarmed the theory of the Colombian Prosecutor’s Office.
“The most critical thing about the action of the Prosecutor’s Office for Domain Extinction is that it brings from the criminal process the hypothesis, but not the evidence or evidence that would demonstrate those facts,” the court argued in the recent ruling, according to information from the ‘ The spectator ‘. «In other words, it brings the story, particularly in this matter, but not the substantial data that would allow corroborating the facts. It would be expected that if there was an import fiction by that total sum, the determined data of the same will be indicated, that is, amount and date of the turn or the international transaction for its payment, what merchandise was said to import, who intervened ».
The Special Assets Company (SAE), a state entity that is in charge of the assets seized to SAAB, said in a statement that to date “it has not been officially notified by the Court, and that because it is a decision of First instance, must be subjected to control by a higher instance ».
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