The U.S. Justice Department and the Homeland Security Task Force (HSTF) announced Sunday that Álvaro Pulido Vargas, a Colombian businessman and long-time associate of Maduro ally Alex Saab, is in U.S. custody after years on the run. He is being held in South Florida and will make his first appearance Tuesday in federal court in Miami on two indictments totaling more than $2 billion.
Pulido, 62, a Colombian national, was described by prosecutors as the long-time business partner of Alex Saab Moran, a confidant of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro. He was first indicted in a Miami federal court in 2019, with the DEA and the State Department offering a reward of up to $10 million for information leading to his capture. A Justice Department release also disclosed that he once used the alias German Enrique Rubio Salas and was convicted under that name in Italy in 1997 on drug trafficking charges.
A federal grand jury indicted Pulido and four co-defendants in October 2021. Between July 2015 and 2020, prosecutors allege, the group bribed officials to win food and medicine contracts under Venezuela's government "Local Committees for Supply and Production" (CLAP) program, then inflated prices to pocket the difference. The co-conspirators received about $1.6 billion from the Venezuelan government, with roughly $180 million moving through the United States, including accounts in the Southern District of Florida, before being laundered through bank accounts in Antigua, the UAE and the U.S. The charges: one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering and four counts of money laundering, each carrying up to 20 years.
The 2019 indictment charged Pulido and Saab with laundering about $350 million. After winning contracts to build low-income housing in Venezuela, prosecutors say, the pair exploited the government's currency controls — submitting fake import documents for goods never actually imported and bribing officials to approve them — to move roughly $350 million out of Venezuela through the U.S. to overseas accounts. The charges: one conspiracy count and seven counts of money laundering.
Fox News reported details of the 2019 bribery chain: former Venezuelan governor José Gregorio Vielma-Mora and an intermediary allegedly took about $17.3 million in bribes to steer food contracts to the group. Pulido's son, Emmanuel Enrique Rubio Gonzalez, is one of the four co-defendants in the 2021 case.
The U.S. has not explained how Pulido came into its custody. Justice Department spokesperson Nicole Navas Oxman declined to say how he was taken — whether Venezuelan authorities handed him over or U.S. agents seized him — and Caracas has stayed silent. Pulido was previously arrested in Venezuela in 2023 as part of the anti-corruption purge of state oil company PDVSA led by then-vice president Delcy Rodríguez.
Saab was handed over to the U.S. in May by Venezuela's acting president Delcy Rodríguez, pleaded guilty last month in a related bribery case, agreed to cooperate with prosecutors against Maduro and others, and forfeited $195 million in criminal proceeds. Attorney General Todd Blanche announced the arrest on X on Sunday, accusing Pulido of turning "programs meant to provide basic food, medicine and housing for the Venezuelan people" into a vehicle for self-enrichment and money laundering through the U.S. financial system. The arrest is part of the HSTF's operations under Executive Order 14159, which targets transnational criminal organizations.
Keywords: Álvaro Pulido Vargas, Venezuela, money laundering, bribery, Maduro