Just one week after Chavismo handed Alex Saab over to the United States, Colombian journalist Daniel Coronell has published an investigation revealing a series of transfers that Nicolás Maduro’s frontman made to his then lawyer and now presidential candidate Abelardo de la Espriella. The documents supporting the publication are in the file of a closed civil case in Florida and prove transfers of up to $375,000 coming from the companies Saab used to conduct illicit business in Venezuela.
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Saab was deported by the Venezuelan regime to the United States exactly one week ago and appeared before a federal court in Miami last Monday to face charges of money laundering and bribery of high officials. Simultaneously, the far-right politician has been rising in the electoral polls. One week before the elections and with the ban on polls already in effect, he holds second place, which would ensure him a spot in the runoff against the leftist candidate, Iván Cepeda.
The relationship between Saab and De la Espriella is well known. Between 2013 and 2019, the outsider candidate of the Colombian right legally represented the Colombian businessman, one of the main financial operators of the Chavista regime. Surrounded by his Venezuelan businesses and pursued by Washington, De la Espriella has said he tried to convince his client to cooperate with U.S. agencies: “I told him: I am your lawyer, sit down with the Americans and cooperate. I sat him down with the American agencies.” Saab — he said — did not follow that advice and ended the professional relationship. The frontman, for his part, publicly described him in 2021 as “a great lawyer and friend.”
What Coronell reveals happens at the heart of that relationship: the year 2014, when De la Espriella was Saab’s active lawyer. It is not clear, however, under what concept that money was delivered.
Coronell identifies two companies as the origin of the transfers. The first is Group Grand Limited, incorporated in Hong Kong and sanctioned by the United States. According to the investigation, Saab used that company to sell $350 million in expired and altered food with which the Venezuelan regime assembled the so-called CLAP bags, the subsidized food distribution program aimed at the poorest families in the country. The second is Consorcio Estructuras Metálicas, a subsidiary of the so-called Global Construction Fund, through which Saab and his partner Álvaro Pulido collected nearly $700 million to build public housing. They executed less than 5% of the works.
From those two companies, according to the documents, more than $370,000 went to accounts related to De la Espriella.
Another piece of evidence of the money deliveries is a letter with the letterhead “ABELARDO G. DE LA ESPRIELLA,” dated May 1, 2014, and addressed to a Miami law firm headed by lawyer Timothy Richards, a tax specialist who, according to his own presentation, has acted as an expert witness in money laundering cases for the U.S. Department of Justice.
In that letter, De la Espriella confirms three transfers. The first, for $199,950, was made on April 22, 2014, from the Global Bank of Commerce, a bank in Antigua and Barbuda, from an account in the name of Group Grand Limited. The second, for $99,950, was sent a week later from the same banking entity, but this time from an account of Consorcio Estructuras Metálicas. The third, for $74,950, was scheduled for May 6, again from Group Grand Limited.
The Cambio journalist highlights a detail that draws attention: each transfer is always $50 below a round number, which in financial compliance language is known as “structuring,” a practice associated with attempts to evade automatic transaction reporting.
The letter ends with a precise instruction: the funds “must be delivered to Mr. Rafael Mora and are not part of the purchase of 2127 Brickell Avenue, Unit 2205 in Bristol Tower.” The mentioned apartment, partially purchased with these funds by a family company of De la Espriella, also appears in the case documents.
The journalist promises to dedicate new chapters to the property. The investigation, however, does not identify who Rafael Mora is, nor why he would be the recipient of a large part of the money.
A second document confirms the movements. It is an email that Alex Saab sent directly to De la Espriella on April 29, 2015, almost a year after the transfers. In the message, Saab forwards an email whose subject is “Richards y Asociados” — the same Miami firm — and details two payments debited from the initials GGL, presumably Group Grand Limited, with dates matching two of the three transfers documented in the letter.
The email is accompanied by a SWIFT bank confirmation. That document certifies that the sender was Group Grand Limited, based in Wan Chai, Hong Kong; that the funds came from the Global Bank of Commerce in Antigua; that the intermediary bank was Wells Fargo in San Francisco; and that the money arrived at Richards’ account at Bank of America in Miami. A real labyrinth. The declared concept in the transfer is “International Tax Advisory.” Coronell maintains that this concept does not match the real destination of the money, which according to the documents was split between the purchase of the apartment in Brickell and payments to Rafael Mora, about whom no further information is given.
The investigation points out that other associates of De la Espriella have faced legal consequences for receiving money from the same networks that tried to circumvent the sanctions the United States imposed on Venezuela and a large group of its operators.
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De la Espriella did not respond to the questions Coronell sent him.
