Fugitive businessman Alvaro Pulido is in U.S. custody on long-running bribery charges tied to Venezuelan state contracts, with a first Miami court date set for Tuesday.
American officials said Sunday that the 62-year-old Colombian-born businessman had been taken into U.S. custody after years as a wanted figure in a major corruption case linked to the Maduro era in Venezuela. He is scheduled to make his initial appearance in Miami federal court.
Prosecutors have long alleged that Pulido paid bribes to top Venezuelan officials for lucrative state contracts. The probe is led by the DEA, the FBI, and Homeland Security Investigations, and the case sits with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida. How he reached U.S. custody remains unclear.
The Hill, carrying Associated Press reporting, said Pulido was indicted in Miami federal court in 2019 and again in 2021 as part of the investigation into his longtime business partner, Alex Saab. Both men hail from Colombia.
Prosecutors allege that Pulido and Saab built a network of offshore shell companies to funnel bribes to allies of ousted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. In return, they allegedly secured more than $2 billion in contracts to import food, medicine, and low-cost housing.
Attorney general frames the case as theft from the Venezuelan people
Attorney General Todd Blanche posted Sunday about the custody development and the harm alleged in the scheme. He tied the charges to basic needs programs and to misuse of the American financial system.
Blanche wrote:
"His alleged actions show a blatant disregard to the Venezuelan people by corrupting government programs intended to provide critical food, medicine, and housing for personal enrichment and exploiting the American financial system to do it,"
He also stressed that distance and delay would not shield defendants from American courts:
"No amount of time or distance will stop" the Justice Department "from working with our federal law enforcement and international partners to pursue these criminals and bring them to justice in an American courtroom,"
That message tracks a broader push to bring high-value foreign targets into U.S. courtrooms, similar in spirit to recent cross-border enforcement actions against cartel networks.
Saab’s guilty plea raised the stakes for Maduro allies
Saab, once an ally of Maduro, was deported to the United States in May by Delcy Rodríguez. Rodríguez, formerly Maduro’s vice president, became acting president after the U.S. military’s ouster of Maduro in January.
Last month, Saab pleaded guilty in a related bribery case. He agreed to cooperate against Maduro and other individuals and to forfeit $195 million in criminal proceeds. Pulido’s custody now puts another central figure from that network before a U.S. judge.
Venezuelan authorities have so far stayed silent on Pulido’s transfer. The AP account noted the political pressure on Rodríguez from coalition factions that want her to resist Trump administration efforts to round up Venezuelan insiders wanted by the United States.
Those loyalty fights sit alongside other high-stakes decisions facing Washington, including debates over major military spending priorities in the current administration.
Indictments, a multimillion-dollar reward, and an older drug conviction
Before the latest custody news, the DEA and the State Department had offered a reward of up to $10 million for information leading to Pulido’s arrest. The dual Miami indictments in 2019 and 2021 kept the case open for years while he remained outside U.S. reach.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida said Pulido also had a history of drug trafficking. That record includes a 1997 conviction in Italy under the alias German Enrique Rubio.
In 2023, Venezuelan authorities arrested Pulido during a sprawling corruption crackdown inside the state oil company PDVSA. Rodríguez led that drive while she was still vice president. His later move into U.S. custody closes one gap that American agents had left open for years.
Federal prosecutors cast the alleged scheme as more than contract fraud. They describe a pipeline that diverted programs meant to deliver food, medicine, and housing, then routed the proceeds through the U.S. financial system. Blanche’s Sunday post put that charge in plain terms for the public.
Pulido’s Tuesday appearance in Miami will be the first court test of those allegations on American soil. Saab’s plea and forfeiture already gave prosecutors a cooperating witness and a large recovery from the same alleged enterprise.
When foreign power brokers loot aid pipelines and then touch the U.S. banking system, American indictments and extraditions are not optional theater, they are the bare minimum of accountability.
