MIAMI — Alvaro Pulido, a Colombian businessman wanted for years in the United States on charges of laundering money from bribery schemes involving Venezuelan government officials, has been taken into U.S. custody, The Associated Press and the U.S. Justice Department reported.
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 onetime ally of ousted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, AP said. The Drug Enforcement Administration and the State Department had offered a reward of up to $10 million for information leading to his arrest. A Homeland Security Task Force spokesperson, Nicole Navas Oxman, said Sunday that the investigation was led by the DEA, FBI and Homeland Security Investigations. Details of where and how he was arrested were not released.
The 62-year-old, also known as German Enrique Rubio Salas, is due to make his initial appearance Tuesday afternoon in the Southern District of Florida, the Justice Department said. The 2021 indictment accuses him and four co-defendants of paying bribes to win about $1.6 billion in contracts to supply food and medicine through CLAP, a Venezuelan government program, inflating costs to fund the bribes, and moving about $180 million through or to the United States.
The 2019 case accuses Pulido and Saab of laundering about $350 million from a bribery scheme built around a contract to construct low-income housing, in which prosecutors say they exploited Venezuela’s government-controlled exchange rate with fraudulent import documents. He faces 13 money-laundering-related counts across the two cases, each carrying up to 20 years in prison. The department said he also had a 1997 drug-trafficking conviction in Italy under his alias.
“Those accused of exploiting the American financial system should understand that distance, borders, and time will not shield them from the reach of the American legal system,” the department said in its statement.
Sources: The Associated Press, U.S. Department of Justice
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