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Roberto Deniz: Nicolás Maduro is trying to reelect as a president in a totally unfair election. What the international community can do to find a democratic way that helps Venezuelan people?
Maria Hinojosa: (THEME MUSIC) From Futuro Media and PRX, it’s Latino USA. I’m Maria Hinojosa. Today, journalist Roberto Deniz and his work uncovering a corruption case in Venezuela with close ties to the United States.
Roberto Deniz is a Venezuelan investigative journalist and in 2016 he began looking into a huge government program. That program delivered food boxes to millions of low-income families suffering a country-wide food shortage. But soon Venezuelans started complaining about the poor quality of the food.
(MUSIC FADES IN) Roberto found that the contractor behind this program was Alex Saab, a Colombian businessman with close ties to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, the man who succeeded Hugo Chávez. During the Maduro administration, Saab earned millions of dollars in state contracts. Roberto’s work not only uncovered widespread corruption in the Maduro government, it also revealed the key role Saab played in that story.
But not without consequences. (MUSIC FADES OUT)
In 2017, Alex Saab sued Roberto for defamation. Roberto and his editors work at armando.info which is a news site, and it’s the place that published this investigation. They ended up leaving Venezuela out of fear of more retaliations. However, the story that Roberto initially uncovered would end up taking a new spin.
In 2020, Alex Saab was detained in the Republic of Cabo Verde, and later, he was extradited to the United States, accused of diverting 350 million dollars from Venezuela through the United States. Saab’s arrest and eventual trial in the U.S. Would lead to more revelations of his close ties to Maduro. But while Roberto was getting ready to cover the trial, something unexpected happened.
News: “We’ve secured the release of every American being held in Venezuela. In addition to that, Venezuela, thus far, is keeping their commitment toward the democratic election.”
Maria Hinojosa: In December of 2023 President Joe Biden and President Nicolás Maduro agreed to a prisoner swap. The U.S. exchanged Alex Saab for 10 U.S. citizens who had been imprisoned in Venezuela. Maduro, who’s been in power for over a decade now, said he would allow for fair presidential elections. But the elections scheduled for this July 28th already look at risk.
News anchor: “Tonight, political tensions between the United States and Venezuela escalating once again over concerns that the South American country won’t hold free elections.”
“Miles de venezolanos…”
News anchor: ” The U.S. taking measures against Venezuela after its highest court blocked the presidential candidacy of opposition front-runner Maria Corina Machado on Friday.”
Maria Hinojosa: Since the year 2000, the Venezuelan migrant population in the U.S. has increased by just under 600 percent.
News: “The Venezuelan crisis is the biggest humanitarian crisis that most Americans have never heard of. Um, we know about Syrians leaving because of the war, we know about Ukrainians leaving because of the Russian invasion. But roughly the same number of people have left Venezuela.”
Maria Hinojosa: And if you missed it, dear listener, this migration has a lot to do with the continuation of the Maduro government. Maduro’s administration has seen high inflation rates, waves of protests, and shortages of food and medicine.
The U.S. has tried different methods of putting pressure on Maduro, mostly through the imposition of economic sanctions, like limiting Venezuelan government oil sales. But while the U.S. claims these sanctions target the government, studies by U.S. institutions show that the largest impact is being felt by the average Venezuelan citizen. (MUSIC FADES IN)
Roberto Deniz continues to report on his home country of Venezuela, but now he’s doing it from Colombia, despite the fact that he faces continuous harassment from the Venezuelan government. Since leaving Venezuela, Maduro’s government has accused the investigative journalist of inciting hate and has issued an arrest warrant with a 20-year prison sentence.
In May, Roberto’s work into Alex Saab’s ties to Maduro was featured in a Frontline PBS documentary.
News: “La historia de Alex Saab nos cuenta como un régimen se sostiene en el poder.”
“This is a story of corruption, of kleptocracy, on a scale that the world has not seen.”
Maria Hinojosa: Roberto Deniz recently spoke with our co-executive producer Peniley Ramírez, who’s also an investigative journalist and has been covering Latin America for many years. They spoke about Roberto’s investigation about the role the United States had in this corruption scandal and the upcoming elections in Venezuela.
Here’s their conversation now:
Peniley Ramírez: Hello, Roberto! Welcome to Latino USA.
Maria Hinojosa: Thank you for having me.
Peniley Ramírez: So Roberto, as you know, over the past decade, more than seven million people have left Venezuela. Could you please tell our listeners why Venezuelans are looking for a new life in other countries, including the United States?
Roberto Deniz: I think that number that you mentioned is the best number to try to explain the bad results of the Hugo Chávez government first and then Nicolás Maduro government. We’re talking about seven million of Venezuelan people are living abroad that flee the country, especially for social-economic reasons.
That is something that never happened in the Venezuelan history. Venezuela, during a lot of years, even in the 20th century, Venezuela was a country that received a lot of population from different countries, from Europe first, and then from countries like Colombia, Ecuador, Peru. People that went to Venezuela to try to live there and find a better economical condition than their countries.
Archival tape: “Venezuela’s president opens a new road, which, like all the new projects, was built with the country’s fabulous oil income.”
Roberto Deniz: This long political process that Venezuela has lived since 1999, it is terrible. Venezuela, during all of these years, started a tremendous social crisis, economical crisis, in first time in it’s history had an hyperinflation, and that is terrible because you get money from your job, but it’s like you don’t have money because the value of that money is zero. The main industry of Venezuela, it is now in a terrible condition because there are no foreign investment, because Venezuela, the government decided that the oil operation is just in state hands. And it is terrible because I think that we have not seen maybe the worst part of this.
Peniley Ramírez: Well, in May, Frontline released a documentary, which is mainly about you, following your work and your investigation into Alex Saab, which is this contractor favored by President Nicolás Maduro. Could you tell me how you started investigating Saab in the first place?
And also, what are the main things that you found?
Roberto Deniz: I started to investigate this social program that is in Venezuela, called it CLAP, to distribute food to poorest people in Venezuela.
News anchor: “In this warehouse, 35,000 CLAP boxes arrive daily. From here, they go to 19 of the 24 parishes in Caracas every two weeks.”
Roberto Deniz: And I had the information that there were a lot of corruption behind this program. I uncovered in 2016 that Alex Saab was the main guy behind this social program and that the food that this guy was importing to Venezuela was bad food. (MUSIC FADES IN) I would say that maybe, the most important thing that is in the documentary is that this story shows the real nature of Nicolás Maduro’s regime.
Because when Venezuela was living its worst economic and social crisis that we have seen, Nicolás Maduro was thinking only to give contracts to this guy, to give a lot of money, money coming from public funds of the Venezuelan people, to Alex Saab. And maybe the worst thing is that part of that money was used to import this bad food. (MUSIC FADES OUT)
Peniley Ramírez: Well, Saab is not even Venezuelan, he is a Colombian man. So why do you think that he became so important for Nicolás Maduro?
Roberto Deniz: I’m totally convinced that it’s related with money. In the documentary, we interview Michael Nadler, the American prosecutor that indicted Alex Saab in 2019 for money laundering. And in the documentary, you can see that Michael Nadler said, that Alex Saab admit that all of the contracts that he got, part of the money was going to Nicolás Maduro and Maduro’s family.
Michael Nadler: “During these meetings, Alex Saab made it clear to us that he was directly connected and had first-person access to Nicolás Maduro.”
Roberto Deniz: I’m sure that that is why this guy is so important for Nicolás Maduro.
Because what Maduro has done to try to defend Alex Saab is, you know, try to say that, ‘Well, Alex Saab is a guy that was helping us during the economic crisis. He also was helping Venezuela to try to evade or circumvent the American sanctions against Venezuela.’ And that is totally false. Alex Saab started doing business in Venezuela in 2011.
Hugo Chávez was alive when he started and when he got the first contract in Venezuela. But then when Nicolás Maduro became president in 2013, this guy became in a kind of favorite contractor first, but then he became shadow figure behind Nicolás Maduro.
Peniley Ramírez: If Alex Saab was accused of this widespread corruption inside Venezuela, then why he ended up in the United States?
Roberto Deniz: Since 2015-16, there was an investigation that starts in United States because he was using the U.S. financial system to move the money that he was getting from the Venezuelan government.
In 2019, he was indicted for several charges, but especially one of them was related to money laundering. In 2020, Alex Saab, after more than a year detained in Cabo Verde, he was extradited to the United States, in October 2021.
And during all of this process, there was a moment in the trial that the judge ordered to unseal a document and that document revealed that Alex Saab was talking with DEA agents between 2019 and 2020.
News anchor: “Well, Alex Saab is believed to know some of Nicolás Maduro’s most compromising secrets about corruption and malfeasance.
But what Maduro apparently didn’t know is that Saab likely turned over much of those secrets years ago, to U.S. authorities.”
Roberto Deniz: For me, the most difficult thing to answer is, like, why Nicolás Maduro continues defending him.
Peniley Ramírez: That’s what we will say in Spanish, la pregunta del millón de dólares, right? So the million-dollar question.
Roberto Deniz: Yes. Es la pregunta del millón. Es la pregunta del millón. (MUSIC FADES IN) But I think that Maduro needs to continuing defending Alex Saab because for Maduro was very crucial to try to avoid that Alex Saab face the trial for money laundering in the United States because maybe we would know many other things. (MUSIC)
Peniley Ramírez: But then at the very last minute, when many people thought that Saab would go to prison and potentially will expose this corruption inside the Maduro government, Saab is exchanged for political prisoners and he’s sent back to Venezuela.
Roberto Deniz: And he was released on December of last year, 2023.
Peniley Ramírez: And Maduro welcomes him like this national hero. So why do you think the United States sent Saab back to Venezuela and to Maduro?
Roberto Deniz: That is a difficult question to answer because even today, nobody in the United States has solved it. Nicolás Maduro understood that detained American citizens in Venezuela it was a kind of important piece to negotiate with the United States, that these American citizens could be exchanged by the one that he wanted, Alex Saab, and for me, what is incredible is that the Biden administration decided to exchange Alex Saab for these 10 American citizens, and it is a very negative message because you have the president of the United States trying to stop a legal investigation. During the history of the United States, we have seen this kind of exchange. But what is incredible here is that different U.S. officers denied that possibility, they always said: “Well, Alex Saab, his name is not on the table because this is a judicial case. It’s not a political thing. He has to face the U.S. justice.” But at the end, this didn’t happen.
Peniley Ramírez: So the U.S. has this long history of putting pressure on Venezuela by imposing sanctions.
Do you think, considering all of this, that these sanctions actually work to put pressure on Maduro’s government?
Roberto Deniz: It is a difficult question, but what is difficult for me as a Venezuelan journalist, as a Venezuelan citizen, if you see what the Trump administration tried to do in Venezuela, it didn’t work.
But if you see what is doing the Biden administration, it seems that it didn’t work. And the reality is that the Nicolás Maduro continues in the power. Nicolás Maduro is trying to re-elect as a president in a totally unfair election, and we don’t have the answer, how to or what the international community can do to find a democratic way that helps Venezuelan people to solve the crisis and to try to start a new kind of political era, or new political process.
Peniley Ramírez: Maduro has been in office for 11 years now. So why do you think there is so much attention on the elections scheduled for this July 28th?
Roberto Deniz: Because if Maduro gets the re-election, probably the political crisis is going to continue, probably Venezuelan migration is going to continue, and probably the economical crisis is going to continue. Nicolás Maduro continues detaining political oppositions in Venezuela. Nicolás Maduro didn’t accept María Corina Machado, the political opposition leader that won last year the primary election between the opposition.
And that is another thing that Maduro shows, that he’s not interested in fair election in Venezuela. You see that there is a lot of people behind the opposition. You see that there is a kind of new hope for Venezuelan people that try to solve this long crisis in a democratic way, but today I’m not sure how it’s going to react Nicolás Maduro in case he lose the election, as all polls chose.
Peniley Ramírez: You are covering this election from another country, and you have an arrest warrant against you issued by Maduro’s government. There was this raid in the house of your parents in Caracas, your family has been threatened, but why do you keep investigating corruption in the Venezuelan government?
Roberto Deniz: I think that in every country, but especially in countries like Venezuela, the independent journalism is very important.
There is no free press in Venezuela. I understood that when all the institutions of a state like Venezuela are against you, the only way to defend was doing my job. And that is what I decided to do.
Peniley Ramírez: I want to close with you as a Venezuelan and as a person. And I wonder, Roberto, what’s your hope for the future of Venezuela?
Roberto Deniz: My hope is that Venezuela can start a new political era, a democratic era. For me, it’s very sad… You see here in Colombia, where I am living since 2018, young Venezuelan people that could be living in Venezuela, working in Venezuela for their dreams, for their projects. To see that people in other countries suffering, trying to get a minimum conditions to survive to a life in another country is so sad. (MUSIC FADES IN)
My hope is that, that maybe Venezuela can recover and in some way the economical things start to fix because if you see how big is the economical crisis in Venezuela, that is something that is going to take many, many years to recover.
But if we start now, a kind of new political era, new political process, a new democratic path, maybe it’s going to be the first step to try to going in that direction in the next few years. (MUSIC FADES OUT)
Maria Hinojosa: This episode was produced by Elizabeth Lowenthal Torres and edited by Andrea López-Cruzado. It was mixed by J.J. Carubin. Special thanks to Frontline and the team behind their documentary, “A Dangerous Assignment, Uncovering Corruption in Maduro’s Venezuela,” which is available on PBS.org. The Latino USA team also includes Julia Caruso, Jessica Ellis, Victoria Estrada, Reynaldo Leaños Jr., Stephanie Lebow, Luis Luna, Glorimar Márquez, Marta Martínez, Mike Sargent, Nour Saudi, and Nancy Trujillo.
I’m your host and co-executive producer, Maria Hinojosa. Join us again on our next episode. In the meantime, I’ll see you on all of our social media and remember, ¡No te vayas!
Bye! (MAIN THEME)
Stephanie Lebow: Latino USA is made possible in part by the Heising-Simons Foundation. Unlocking knowledge, opportunity, and possibilities. More at hsfoundation.org. The Ford Foundation, working with visionaries on the front lines of social change worldwide. And the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. (MUSIC)
