A close financial fixer for ousted Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro pleaded guilty in Miami to a money laundering charge related to the South American country's food-import contracts and oil sales that violated US sanctions. Alex Saab, a Colombian businessman who was extradited from Venezuela to the US four months ago, entered his plea and agreed to forfeit $195 million during a federal court hearing Tuesday before US District Judge Kathleen M. Williams. As part his deal with prosecutors, Saab agreed to cooperate with authorities who brought a criminal case against Maduro, who was seized by US forces in January on charges of leading a drug-trafficking conspiracy. Maduro is being held without bail in a federal lockup in Brooklyn, New York, along with his wife, Cilia Flores. Their trial is set for June 2027.

Saab was deported in May by the interim Venezuelan government, where acting President Delcy Rodriguez sought to quickly open up the country's tightly-held oil industry to foreign investment. That included a 100-year contract that President Donald Trump called "the biggest oil deal in world history."

The case against Saab is the second brought by US authorities. He was detained in 2021 in Miami on bribery charges, but was released in 2023 as part of a prisoner swap negotiated by the administration of former US President Joe Biden that secured the release of 10 Americans held in Venezuela. In May, then-acting Attorney General Todd Blanche vowed to hold Saab "fully accountable under US law" for allegedly conspiring to bribe Venezuelan officials to secure "lucrative food contracts imports into Venezuela," including forging documents from Colombia and Mexico. Venezuela officials backed his extradition on the grounds of "national interests."