OFAC Sanctions People, Entities Involved in Venezuelan Food Distribution Scheme

The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned a Colombian national, his business associates, family members and a collection of shell companies that has propped up the Nicolas Maduro regime through food imports and distribution in Venezuela, Treasury said in a July 25 press release. OFAC sanctioned Alex Nain Saab Moran, nine other associates and 13 entities for participating in the scheme.

Treasury said Saab profited from “overvalued contracts” for the Local Committees for Supply and Production, the Venezuelan food subsidy program, which is used by the Maduro regime as a “political tool to reward support and punish political criticism.” Saab and associates “devised a corporate structure” to “acquire” food from a foreign distributor, assemble it in a foreign country and ship it to Venezuela for a profitable rate, the press release said. Saab and his business partner, Alvaro Enrique Pulido Vargas, used businesses registered in Mexico and Hong Kong for the scheme. Saab used the profits to bribe Venezuelan officials for more contracts, including former Venezuelan governor Jose Gregorio Vielma Mora and the country’s Minister of Food Rodolfo Clemente Marco Torres, Treasury said.

Other entities involved in Saab’s sanctioned practices included companies based in the United Arab Emirates, Colombia, Turkey and the U.S., Treasury said. Others sanctioned include two of Saab’s sons, Pulido’s son and three of Maduro’s stepsons, Treasury said.

Alex Saab engaged with Maduro insiders to run a wide-scale corruption network “they callously used to exploit Venezuela’s starving population,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement. “Treasury is targeting those behind Maduro’s sophisticated corruption schemes, as well as the global network of shell companies that profit from the former regime’s military-controlled food distribution program.”