According to US authorities “Saab is charged with laundering the proceeds of violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) in connection with a scheme to pay bribes to take advantage of Venezuela’s government-controlled exchange rate.”

Saab is accused of siphoning around $350 million USD out of Venezuela and into overseas accounts via the US. The US also alleges Saab was behind a corruption network involving a government-subsidized food program called CLAP that allowed Maduro and his allies to steal millions of dollars.

Saab faces money laundering and fraud charges in his native Colombia as well. According to reports by the the Colombian publication El Espectador, Colombia’s prosecutors opened a case against Saab immediately after his arrest in Cape Verde.

“According to the investigative body, Saab would have resorted to multiple maneuvers to evade tax and customs responsibilities, and give the appearance of legality to an irregular scheme of exports and imports, especially through its company Shatex S.A., which for years was dedicated to the export of textiles and construction materials.

Among the multiple irregularities, it was found that the company registered an economic growth of 923% in 2007, unusual growth if one takes into account that between 2004 and 2006 the company actually lost money and revenues fell by 33%. Shatex S.A. ceased operations in 2010 but in the following years, supposedly made exports, conducted sales and purchase operations, and in 2011 it channeled the flow of more than $2 billion COP abroad through the Colombian exchange system”, reads the report.

Colombian President Iván Duque lauded the extradition of Saab, calling it a “triumph in the fight against drug trafficking, money laundering and corruption led by the dictatorship of Nicolás Maduro.”

Saab, a 49-year old Colombian national was born in Barranquilla, son of a Lebanese migrant. Saab was arrested in June 2020 when his plane stopped to refuel in Cape Verde on the way to Iran. The arrest was followed by a lengthy legal battle as the United States has no extradition treaty with Cape Verde and Saab, who also holds Venezuelan citizenship, was given diplomatic coverage by the Maduro government after the arrest.

Saab had also been sanctioned in the past by the Trump administration for allegedly utilizing a network of shell companies spanning the globe, in the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Hong Kong, Panama, Colombia and Mexico, to hide huge profits from overvalued food contracts obtained through bribes and kickbacks.

Venezuelan authorities have called the US charges politically motivated. The government of the South American nation, accused the United States of kidnapping Saab, whom they describe as a diplomatic envoy in a mission to Iran to negotiate supplies of fuel and food that have been interrupted by U.S. sanctions.

Venezuela’s government said Saturday it would halt the Mexico-based negotiations with the opposition in retaliation for the extradition. Nicolás Maduro had named Saab as a member of its negotiating team in these talks, which began in September.

Venezuelan authorities also re-apprehended six oil executives, including five American citizens, who had been under house arrest. The executives worked for Citgo Petroleum, a Houston-based subsidiary of the Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA. They were arrested in 2017 on embezzlement charges stemming from a never-executed proposal to refinance some $4 billion in CITGO bonds by offering a 50% stake in the company as collateral. Last year, they were sentenced to between 8 and 13 years in prison.

On May of this year, the so-called “CITGO 6” were released to house arrest in an apparent gesture of goodwill to the Biden administration. The US State Department denounced the imprisonment of “six wrongfully detained Americans in Venezuela” and called for their release.

According to court papers filed November 1^st, US prosecutors have agreed to dismiss almost all of the lengthy indictment against Alex Saab as part of a secret deal made with Cape Verde to gain his extradition to the United States. However, Saab still faces up to 20 years in prison on the lone remaining money-laundering charge. After an initial court appearance on October 18, Saab is now set to appear for his arraignment date in federal court on November 15.

Cape Verde government officials have said that Saab should be extradited, but a West African court has said that he should be freed. His fate has been appealed to the Cape Verde Courts, and while that procedure rolls forward, a groundswell of discontent, crying “Free Alex Saab” has popped up on Twitter, with an apparent epicenter in West Africa, where few people would have ever heard of Alex Saab; a Colombian of Lebanese ancestry.

BuzzFeed News teamed up with the Digital Africa Research Lab to look into the surprising support coming from Nigeria on Twitter with the #FreeAlexSaab hashtag. According to the journalists, the operation was masterminded by a Nigerian PR firm and a British nonprofit called Digital Good Governance for Africa.  According to the BuzzFeed report, this organized “AstroTurf” (US political slang for fake grassroots organizing) campaign paid influencers to tweet support for Alex Saab in an attempt to influence the judicial process in Cape Verde and broader public opinion.

When #FreeAlexSaab started trending on Twitter, the scam quickly unraveled.

Twitter subsequently suspended over 1,500 twitter accounts, including a Nigerian influencer with a large following who is alleged to have paid for positive tweets about Alex Saab. Supposed legitimate journalists for the Nigerian Tribune and TheCable also had their accounts suspended, as they not only tweeted support for Alex Saab, but tagged Twitter account @Fernand47588665, which the investigators said was used to verify tweets for compensation.

Ringleaders Exposed

Buzzfeed reports that Nigerian human rights activists and social media influencers received a document from Digital Good Governance for Africa, led by professor Naji Makarem, a lecturer at University College in London, and Nigerian expatriate Christian Elemele with instructions to recruit West African Influencers to gin up support for Saab.

“The influencer is expected to use the hashtags #FreeAlexSaab and tag prominent Nigerians, Ghanians and Sengalese handles from government, business, celebrities, activists etc. which will be provided to the influencer,” read the document.

The report goes on to say that Nigerian PR firm Alpha Reach employees recruited 40 Nigerian influencers with over a million total followers to participate in the scam. When investigators reached Alpha Reach head Japheth Omojuwa, he responded “I don’t think I can start to have a conversation about whether Alpha is involved. If they are, there have definitely been some form of nondisclosure,” Omojuwa said, before eventually issuing a statement to the effect that his organization was not involved, though also saying that it was possible firm employees worked on the campaign.

Government Involvement

BuzzFeed did not go so far as to accuse the Venezuelan or any other government for backing or participating in the operation, however the British paper Financial Times did, saying that it obtained an intelligence document concluding the Venezuelan regime “and/or its proxies (witting or unwitting) are involved in a coordinated campaign to influence both the government of Cabo Verde and its population to obstruct Alex Saab’s extradition.”

Twitter Shares Blame

The whole incident is not terribly surprising. Venezuela wants Alex Saab protected not only because he has been very valuable as a proxy for Maduro and making deals to get what the Venezuelan government wants, but the Maduro regime also fears what secrets he might cough up once US prosecutors get their hands on him. It should be said that Saab is also facing charges of fraud, corruption & money laundering in his own country of Colombia, where Colombian prosecutors have already seized several of his luxury properties.

Twitter has become the vehicle of choice for troll farms, influence peddlers, and fake accounts of all types as well as generalized nastiness—largely due to the anonymity it affords, and the ease at which fake or bot-controlled accounts can be set up with no verification. The very structure of Twitter makes it easy to buy influence and fabricate false outrage. The company seems reluctant to address this issue, which must be dealt with at the structural level, not the individual account level. Until then, troll farms from Nigeria to Russia to North Korea to Arizona.