Fat Leonard and Alex Saab

His name is Leonard Glenn Francis, but everyone calls him Fat Leonard.

His company, Glenn Defense Marine Asia, made him very rich.

His business was supplying American warships in Asian ports with food, fuel, etc.

Fat Leonard became good friends with the American admirals and captains who attended his parties.

He was a generous host and it was known that his already enormous fortune continued to grow.

Something similar happened to Alex Saab.

He is the main international financial operator of Nicolás Maduro and his collaborators.

Saab started with a small freight company in Colombia, but moved to Caracas and quickly gained the trust of the most influential protagonists of the Bolivarian revolution.

Relying on his new friends, he begins to launch increasingly ambitious businesses.

As far as we know, Alex Saab and Fat Leonard do not know each other personally.

However, their lives not only resemble each other, but intertwine in an unprecedented way.

They both understood that a sure path to wealth is to buy low and sell high to the Government.

Both also experienced the risks of this business strategy: both ended up in prison as a result of international operations worthy of Hollywood.

But there are more surprises: just before Christmas last year, they were exchanged by two governments with very different ways of tackling corruption.

Fat Leonard, despite being from Malaysia, made his fortune by weaving an extensive web of corruption within the US Navy, bribing senior naval officers with money, trips, meals and prostitutes.

Alex Saab was also successful.

According to the US Government, Saab illicitly took out nearly $350 million by manipulating the Venezuelan exchange system.

This is just one of the cases documented by American justice.

And the surprises continue: After a series of crazy entanglements, both remain under the control of the adversary government.

Alex Saab, accused of acting as a front man for Maduro, ended up imprisoned in the United States after being arrested in Cape Verde, in Africa.

There he made a stopover on his private

jet

to refuel and continue his flight from Iran to Venezuela.

He never arrived.

The US Government had asked the Government of Cape Verde to cooperate in the capture and extradition to the US of Saab to obtain information about the fate of the immense fortunes that evaporated in Bolivarian Venezuela.

Cape Verde thus became the scene of an unlikely diplomatic contest between Venezuela and the United States.

Saab ended up in a North American prison, but apparently he knew things that were too important for Maduro because the Venezuelan government made his release his most important international priority.

Fat Leonard was prosecuted in the United States and was under house arrest in San Diego, California, awaiting the start of his prison sentence.

A judge had agreed that this would be the case as long as his house was guarded by a security team that Fat Leonard would pay for.

Even so, he escaped and ended up in Caracas.

Nicolás Maduro and his people understood how useful it could be for them to have Fat Leonard in Venezuela.

And they imprisoned him.

This is how the peculiar parallel arose: the United States had in its power one of Maduro's most notorious financial operators and he, in turn, had one of the great corruptors of the American Government imprisoned.

But that's where the parallel ends, because the US wanted Fat Leonard to imprison him, while Venezuela wanted Alex Saab to free him.

It is not known why Saab matters so much to Maduro.

But judging by the unusual efforts that were dedicated to freeing him, the secrets that Saab keeps from Maduro and the rest of the presidential entourage must be very important.

In the end, the destinies of the two characters crossed in the context of a diplomatic negotiation in Barbados, through which the international community dreamed, in vain, of resurrecting Venezuelan democracy.

A process was opened that should lead to a democratic presidential election after a “prisoner exchange.”

Fat Leonard in exchange for Alex Saab (and some other hostages) was the condition that would make the rest of the agreement viable.

And, most importantly, it was the promise of Maduro and his people to allow a free, fair and legitimate presidential election to take place.

It was not so.

Shortly before Christmas last year, the prisoner exchange took place.

Immediately afterwards, the Maduro Government failed to fulfill its promise.

Maduro declared himself a candidate and Maria Corina Machado, the most popular political leader in the country, remained disqualified.

Once again, Maduro and his Cuban advisors made fools of diplomats from the State Department, the White House and intelligence agents in Washington.

The Barbados agreement failed.

It will remain in history as a detail that earned Leonard Glenn Francis many years in prison in the United States, and many years of freedom for Alex Saab.

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