This Tuesday, October 13, Colombian-born businessman Alvaro Pulido Vargas, extradited by Venezuela to the United States this weekend, appeared before a federal court in the Southern District of Florida. Pulido Vargas, who also went by the name German Enrique Rubio Salas, was a business partner of fellow Colombian Alex Saab, who is imprisoned in the United States and has already pleaded guilty.
Pulido Vargas is accused in two separate federal cases of allegedly laundering more than US$2 billion in connection with bribery schemes involving the Venezuelan government.
According to court documents held by the Department of Justice, 62-year-old Pulido Vargas was indicted in 2019 and again in 2021 for his alleged participation in different schemes to launder money obtained from bribes and fraud involving officials of the Venezuelan government under Nicolas Maduro’s regime.
Before these alleged crimes, Pulido Vargas had an extensive history of drug trafficking, including a conviction in Italy in 1997 under the alias German Enrique Rubio Salas.
Distance, borders, or time will not protect criminals
“Alvaro Pulido Vargas is no longer a fugitive from justice,” declared Assistant Attorney General A. Tysen Duva of the Department of Justice’s Criminal Division. “Pulido is charged in two major money laundering cases, both involving the use of the U.S. financial system to conceal proceeds obtained through bribery and greed at the expense of the Venezuelan people.”
“The message to anyone who brings their bribery or money laundering schemes from abroad into our borders is clear: the U.S. Department of Justice will pursue these cases and prosecute those who perpetrate them,” he warned.
“The indictments describe a profound betrayal of the Venezuelan people: the corruption of government programs intended to provide essential food, medicine, and housing for personal enrichment,” added the Assistant Attorney General when announcing Pulido Vargas’s extradition.
He took the opportunity to issue a serious warning: “Those accused of exploiting the U.S. financial system must understand that distance, borders, and time will not protect them from the reach of the U.S. legal system. We will continue working with our partners, both at home and abroad, to bring defendants before a U.S. court to answer for the charges against them.”
For his part, Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Administrator Terrance Cole asserted that Pulido Vargas is accused of “moving enormous amounts of illicit money through a corrupt network that exploited the Venezuelan people and abused the U.S. financial system.”
“For years, the DEA and our Homeland Security Task Force (HSTF) partners have pursued Pulido Vargas across borders. Today, that pursuit has brought him to the Southern District of Florida,” Cole added. “Those who finance criminal networks and believe that money, influence, or international borders will protect them from U.S. justice are mistaken. The DEA will relentlessly pursue the individuals and financial networks that fuel corruption, money laundering, and transnational crime that threaten the United States and our partners.”
The 2021 indictment against Alvaro Pulido
In October 2021, a federal grand jury indicted Pulido Vargas and four co-defendants for laundering funds from an alleged bribery scheme involving approximately US$1.6 billion in Venezuelan government contracts for the supply of food and medicine.
According to the indictment, from approximately July 2015 until at least 2020, Pulido Vargas and his accomplices obtained lucrative government contracts through the Local Committees for Supply and Production (CLAP), a program controlled by the Venezuelan government intended to provide food and medicine to the Venezuelan people, by paying bribes to Venezuelan officials.
The defendants allegedly inflated contract costs to finance the bribes and enrich themselves. They are also accused of laundering the money through bank accounts in Antigua, the United Arab Emirates, the United States, and other countries.
As a result of this scheme, Pulido Vargas and his accomplices allegedly received approximately US$1.6 billion from the Venezuelan government and transferred approximately US$180 million through or into the United States, including bank accounts in the Southern District of Florida.
Pulido Vargas is charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering and four counts of money laundering, each carrying a maximum penalty of 20 years in federal prison.
The 2019 indictment against Alvaro Pulido and Alex Saab
In a separate case, Pulido Vargas and Alex Saab Moran, an ally of the Maduro regime, were indicted in July 2019 for allegedly laundering approximately US$350 million in connection with a bribery scheme involving the Venezuelan government’s controlled currency exchange system.
According to the indictment, from approximately November 2011 until at least September 2015, Pulido Vargas and Saab Moran conspired with others to launder the proceeds of an illegal bribery scheme through bank accounts in the United States.
Pulido Vargas and Saab Moran allegedly obtained a contract with the Venezuelan government to build low-cost housing. They subsequently took advantage of the exchange rate controlled by the Venezuelan government by submitting false and fraudulent import documents for goods and materials that were never imported into Venezuela and bribing Venezuelan government officials to approve those documents.
To conceal the illicit proceeds, Pulido Vargas and Saab Moran allegedly transferred money related to the scheme to bank accounts in the Southern District of Florida and moved approximately US$350 million out of Venezuela through the United States, depositing it in overseas accounts they owned or controlled.
Pulido Vargas is charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering and seven counts of money laundering in connection with this scheme. The DEA’s Miami Field Division, the FBI in Miami, and Miami HSI are investigating these cases.