A Colombian national accused of enriching himself through corrupt Venezuelan government programs has been arrested and is set to appear in federal court in South Florida on Tuesday, Oct. 13, the Justice Department announced.
Alvaro Pulido Vargas, 62, was taken into custody during an operation by the Homeland Security Task Force. He faces charges in two separate federal cases accusing him of laundering money through U.S. banks, including accounts in South Florida, to hide profits from bribery schemes tied to Nicolás Maduro’s government.
“Pulido is charged in two separate, significant money laundering schemes, both using the U.S. financial system to hide the profits from his bribery and greed off the backs of the Venezuelan people,” said Assistant Attorney General A. Tysen Duva.
Attorney General Todd Blanche announced the arrest Sunday on X, writing that Pulido Vargas’ alleged actions showed “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.”
Pulido Vargas, who also goes by German Enrique Rubio Salas, was charged in both 2019 and 2021. Under that alias, he was previously convicted of drug trafficking in Italy in 1997, according to the Justice Department.
“For years, DEA and our HSTF partners have pursued Pulido Vargas across borders. Today, that pursuit has brought him to the Southern District of Florida,” said DEA Administrator Terrance Cole.
The food and medicine contracts
The more recent case involves roughly $1.6 billion in Venezuelan government contracts to supply food and medicine through CLAP, a state-run distribution program. Prosecutors allege Pulido Vargas and his associates paid bribes to secure the contracts, then inflated prices to cover the payoffs and pocket the difference, in a scheme running from around July 2015 through at least 2020.
Charged alongside him were his son, Emmanuel Enrique Rubio Gonzalez, and former Venezuelan state governor Jose Gregorio Vielma-Mora, among others. Prosecutors say Vielma-Mora and a middleman collected about $17.3 million in bribes and illicit payments for steering government food contracts and other business advantages to the group.
Investigators say the money moved through a network of companies and bank accounts in Antigua, the United Arab Emirates, the United States and elsewhere, with roughly $180 million flowing into or through the U.S., including South Florida accounts.
“The allegations describe a profound betrayal of the Venezuelan people; corrupting government programs intended to provide critical food, medicine, and housing for personal enrichment,” said U.S. Attorney Jason A. Reding Quiñones.
The housing program case
The earlier case, filed in 2019, centers on a program meant to build homes for low-income Venezuelans. Prosecutors charged Pulido Vargas and Maduro ally Alex Nain Saab Moran with exploiting Venezuela’s government-controlled currency exchange system through a housing contract.
The two allegedly filed false paperwork claiming they had imported building materials that never actually entered Venezuela, then bribed officials to approve the fraudulent documents. Prosecutors say they moved about $350 million out of Venezuela through U.S. banks into overseas accounts they controlled, in a scheme that ran from roughly November 2011 through at least September 2015.
Pulido Vargas faces five money laundering-related charges in the 2021 case, each carrying up to 20 years in federal prison, plus eight additional money laundering-related charges in the 2019 case.
The DEA, FBI and Homeland Security Investigations are investigating both cases under the Homeland Security Task Force initiative.
Blanche framed the arrest as a message to others wanted by U.S. prosecutors: “No amount of time or distance will stop @TheJusticeDept from working with our federal law enforcement and international partners to pursue these criminals and bring them to justice in an American courtroom.”
