Venezuela Bribery Fugitive, Maduro Ally Now Held by DOJ

Alvaro Pulido is a former Venezuelan businessman. He was indicted on bribery charges in the United States in 2019 and in 2021 as part of a larger investigation into a business partner.

Now, Alvaro Pulido is in an American cell, awaiting trial. He will be appearing this week in a Miami court.

A businessman wanted for years in the U.S. for allegedly ">paying bribes to top Venezuelan officials in exchange for lucrative state contracts in Venezuela has been taken into custody.

Alvaro Pulido was indicted in Miami federal court in 2019 and again in 2021 as part of an investigation into his longtime business partner, Alex Saab, a one-time ally of ousted President Nicolás Maduro. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and State Department had been offering a reward of up to $10 million for information leading to his arrest.

Pulido was taken into U.S. custody after an investigation led by the DEA, FBI and Homeland Security Investigations agencies, Nicole Navas Oxman, a Homeland Security Task Force spokesperson, said Sunday.

Oxman didn’t say how Pulido ended up in U.S. custody but said he will make his initial court appearance Tuesday in Miami.

That last part is the fun part; it's not clear if Pulido was already in the United States and was arrested here, or if he was somehow, shall we say, transported here involuntarily by parties as yet unknown. That is what happened to his former business partner's "ally" Nicolás Maduro, after all. 

Saab and Pulido are accused of setting up and operating a chain of shell companies with which to shovel bribe money at Maduro and some of his top allies, in exchange for lucrative import contracts for things like food and medicines. Saab was deported to the United States in May, by Venezuela's interim president Delcy Rodríguez; he has since pleaded guilty in another, related case. 

Here's the really telling piece of the report:

Venezuelan authorities have so far been silent about the arrest, reflecting the challenge acting President Delcy Rodríguez faces appeasing elements of the ruling coalition that want her to resist attempts by the Trump administration to round up scores of Venezuelan insiders wanted by the U.S., sometimes for years, for serious crimes ranging from corruption to drug trafficking.

Ay, that's the rub. Delcy Rodríguez isn't sailing on smooth, blue and serene waters in Venezuela. She is a place-holder, marking time until the country has its next elections in 2027. If Venezuela's elections are honest, she will likely find herself standing in whatever passes for an unemployment line once the votes are tallied. But she is a Maduro creature, having served as his vice president, and it's a certainty that there are still elements in Venezuela, in and out of government, who stand to gain from keeping what's left of the Maduro regime in power.

Venezuela should be on its way to being a wealthy, prosperous modern nation, if for no other reason than that they are sitting atop the world's largest known oil reserves. But Venezuela has been a country where bribery schemes like this were an expected way of doing business, and that kind of culture is hard to shake off, even if you have the steely eyes of the United States on your doings.

Things should stabilize some after the elections, but those are some ways off yet.

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