MIAMI (AP) — A businessman wanted for years in the United States for pay bribes to senior Venezuelan officials in exchange for lucrative state contracts in Venezuela has been taken into custody, US authorities announced on Sunday.
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 former ally of the ousted president. Nicolas Maduro. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the State Department had offered a reward of up to $10 million for information leading to his arrest.
Pulido was taken into U.S. custody after an investigation by the DEA, FBI and Homeland Security investigative agencies, said Nicole Navas Oxman, a spokeswoman for the Homeland Security Task Force.
Oxman did not say how Pulido ended up in U.S. custody, but said he would make his first court appearance Tuesday in Miami.
“His alleged actions demonstrate blatant disregard for the Venezuelan people by corrupting government programs intended to provide essential food, medicine and housing for personal enrichment and exploiting the U.S. financial system to do so,” Attorney General Todd Blanche wrote in a social media post on Sunday.
“No amount of time or distance will stop” the Department of Justice “from working with our federal law enforcement and international partners to pursue these criminals and bring them to justice in an American courtroom,” he wrote.
Venezuelan authorities have so far remained silent on the arrest, reflecting the challenge interim President Delcy Rodríguez faces in appeasing elements of the ruling coalition who want her to resist the Trump administration’s attempts to arrest dozens of Venezuelan insiders wanted by the United States, sometimes for years, for serious crimes ranging from corruption to drug trafficking.
Pulido, of Colombian origin, was arrested in Venezuela in 2023 as part of a sprawling repression on corruption within the state oil company PDVSA, led by Rodríguez while she was Maduro’s vice president. She took over as Venezuela’s interim president after Maduro was ousted by the U.S. military in January.
Prosecutors say Pulido, working with Saab, created a network of offshore shell companies to funnel bribes to key Maduro allies in exchange for contracts to import low-cost food, medicine and housing, at a time of widespread hardship in the South American country.
Saab, also from Colombia, was deported to the United States by Rodríguez in May. Last month he pleaded guilty in a related corruption case, he agreed to cooperate against Maduro and other individuals and forfeited $195 million in criminal proceeds from the corruption scheme.
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Durkin Richer reported from Washington.
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