They raid the houses and offices of two men who would have met with Maduro to free Álex Saab

Since June 2020, the Barranquilla lawyer Álex Saab, of Lebanese descent and nationalized in Venezuela, has been detained in Cape Verde, Africa. Among other accusations, Saab was captured when he had been sent to that country to supposedly negotiate food for the presidential regime of Venezuelan Nicolás Maduro. Amid investigations that Saab was planning to escape, and that it resulted in the dispatch of US vessels to prevent the escape, In the last hours, the houses and offices of two men who were involved in the Barranquillero case were raided.

According to investigations by the newspaper El Tiempo, and information compiled by El Espectador, Fernando Gil Évora and Carlos Anjos are two important executives from Cape Verde and, In August 2020, a little less than two months after Saab’s arrest, they would have traveled to meet with Nicolás Maduro to discuss the legal situation of the Colombian-Venezuelan lawyer.

From the offices and houses of the two alleged emissaries from the African country, the authorities seized computers, cell phones and confidential documents of the two men.

According to El Tiempo, Gil had been removed from his position on the board of directors of the state-owned company Emprofac. According to the authorities, his departure from the post was the result of “The infringement of the duties inherent to the public administrator and deviation from the purpose of the functions.” Something similar happened with Anjos, former director general of tourism, from whom they also “distanced themselves.”

Gil Évora also assured that neither he nor Anjos were in Venezuela or met with Nicolás Maduro, wrote that, “We were not in any presidential palace, so we did not contact any president, much less with government entities from another country. In this sense, it is globally false to speak of political rallies, etc. ”.

As it is understood, then, with the refusal of the African Government to have sent emissaries, the two officials would have arrived in Venezuela, supposedly, through a private flight.

According to exclusive sources, consulted by the newspaper El Tiempo, the raids would seek to demonstrate, in this case, that the two men had broken the law, “This is the step before deciding whether to accuse them or not. It is expected to find messages on their computers and telephones about the true background of the contacts with Venezuela.

The accusation would be directly related to what was sentenced by the Public Ministry, where the meeting of the two men with the president of Venezuela is condemned as ‘usurpation of authority’, crime provided for in article 312 of the Penal Code, which punishes the guilty with penalties of up to five years of deprivation of liberty.

Álex Saab, captured by Interpol agents on June 13, 2020 when his plane made a stop at the Amilcar Cabral International Airport in Cape Verde, he is seeking his freedom with the help of his legal defense and Venezuela, from where he was confirmed, in recent days, as the new extraordinary and plenipotentiary Venezuelan ambassador to the African Union. On January 10, a new hearing will be held before the West African Court of Justice (ECOWAS), in which the legal situation of the captured today will continue to be discussed.

For the North American authorities, according to sources consulted by El Tiempo, the appointment of Saab as ambassador was a kind of move on the part of the Maduro regime to try to free him from his legal positions, however, they explained that this would not help, since , “It is a misstep. No appointment of this type is retroactive. It will not affect his arrest or the extradition process at all. And the dictatorship admits with that move the fear that Saab will be prosecuted in the United States ”.