A journalist in pajamas and in front of a computer can make an entire Government tremble. The documentary A Dangerous Assignment, premiered this week on PBS, shows the investigative work with which the Venezuelan reporter Roberto Deniz uncovered the systematic corruption of the Government presided over by Nicolás Maduro. The price to pay? Exile, judicial persecution and defamation.
Deniz belongs to the editorial staff of Armando.info, a Venezuelan portal dedicated to investigative journalism. Eight years ago he was struck by the poor quality of the food boxes that Chavismo distributed among the population, the CLAP. He didn’t know it then, but he was facing the exclusive of his life, what the journalist Miguel Ángel Bastenier called the moving target: finding the unforeseen, exploiting what appears in an instant and collecting a valuable piece. What happens to a few journalists once in a lifetime. For the majority, never.
Behind that business that became feeding a population hit by an economy that collapsed due to nationalization and exchange controls, a Colombian named Alex Saab was hiding. At that time no one knew him, he operated in the shadow of Chavismo. Deniz followed the trail of those foods that arrived from Hong Kong after passing through Mexico and there he found the name Saab. The millions of dollars that this businessman with a ponytail and thick eyebrows diverted by purchasing poor quality products were just the tip of the iceberg: this was followed by million-dollar contracts for houses that were not built and the sale of stolen oil from PDVSA, the state oil company.
Revealing Saab’s name to the world aroused the anger of Chavismo. The DEA also began to investigate him and came to the conclusion that he was Maduro’s front man. Deniz and two other founders of Armando.info, Ewald Scharfenberg and Joseph Poliszuk, they had to go into exile from Venezuela. Legal cases involving dozens of years in prison weigh on them. A week ago, when PBS announced the premiere of this documentary, the Venezuelan Prosecutor’s Office, in the hands of Chavismo, accused the reporters of receiving money from a plot led by former minister Tareck El Aissami to destroy the reputation of other leaders of the ruling party. The accusation is implausible, among other things because these same reporters were the first to point out El Aissami as corrupt, when he belonged to Maduro’s inner circle and was considered a hero of Chavismo. He has now fallen from grace and remains imprisoned.
Saab was arrested in 2020 in Cape Verde, where he had made a stop to refuel his private plane heading to Iran, where he was going to do business on behalf of Maduro. Police in that African country detained him on an international arrest warrant and later extradited him to the United States, where he faced charges of conspiracy to launder money. US prosecutors established that he had diverted more than $350 million of Venezuelan public money with which he corrupted officials in that country.
The documentary reliably shows something that had always been speculated about. Saab was willing to negotiate with the US authorities, or at least that’s what his lawyer let the judge handling his case know. “The documentary is not limited to a recounting of events. It also brings new findings. For example, the prosecutor who handled the case in Florida, Michael Nadler, speaks for the first time before the cameras about it. He reveals that in one of his interrogations of Saab, he assured him that of every dollar he received, he set aside 50 cents to pay Nicolás Maduro and other Venezuelan leaders,” Scharfenberg says by phone.
While Saab was wearing the orange jumpsuit of the convicts, Chavismo set up a campaign to demand his release. The Government lied and said that he was a Venezuelan diplomat who enjoyed immunity, which is why the United States had detained him illegally. Entire Venezuela was filled with images of him in the style of Che Guevara with a slogan: #FreeSaab. In December 2023, Joe Biden and Maduro agreed to exchange Saab for 10 Americans imprisoned in Venezuela.
Now, Saab lives in Venezuela surrounded by wealth. His wife, the former Italian model Camila Fabri, has been part of the Chavista delegation in the negotiations with the opposition in Mexico and participates in a reality show in which Maduro’s campaign song is chosen for the presidential elections to be held on 28 of July. The son tries to promote a modest career as an actor. Deniz, however, remains in exile. “After the prisoner exchange in Venezuela there was a feeling that justice had not been done in this case. I hope that our documentary somewhat compensates for this impunity,” concludes Scharfenberg.
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