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Monday, October 12, 2026

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Justice · Monday, October 12, 2026

Colombian national arrested to face charges in multibillion-dollar Venezuela money-laundering cases

The File desk · Oct 12, 2026, 10:58 AM UTC

Status

The arrest and the Tuesday court date are confirmed, from a Justice Department release dated Oct. 11, 2026. The schemes in the indictments are allegations only. He is presumed innocent unless proven guilty.

  • Confirmed

    Alvaro Pulido Vargas was arrested and is set for an initial appearance Tuesday afternoon in the Southern District of Florida.

  • Confirmed

    The money-laundering and bribery schemes are what the indictments allege. They are not findings. An indictment is only an allegation, and he is presumed innocent.

Alvaro Pulido Vargas, 62, a Colombian national also known as German Enrique Rubio Salas, was arrested and will make his first court appearance Tuesday afternoon in federal court in Miami. Prosecutors say he was charged in 2019 and again in 2021 in schemes that allegedly laundered more than $2 billion tied to bribery involving officials of Venezuela’s Maduro government. One case involves about $1.6 billion in food-and-medicine contracts. The other involves about $350 million and a co-defendant, Alex Nain Saab Moran. The charges are only allegations. He is presumed innocent unless proven guilty.

The Justice Department’s release, No. 26-1168, is dated Sunday, Oct. 11. It says a federal grand jury in October 2021 charged Pulido Vargas and four co-defendants with laundering proceeds of an alleged bribery scheme involving about $1.6 billion in Venezuelan government contracts for food and medicine. The release says the contracts ran through the Comité Local de Abastecimiento y Producción, or CLAP, a government program meant to supply food and medicine, and that the defendants allegedly paid bribes, inflated costs, and moved money through Antigua, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States. It says about $180 million moved through or to U.S. accounts, including in the Southern District of Florida. The charges on that indictment, the release says, are conspiracy to commit money laundering and four counts of money laundering, each with a maximum of 20 years.

A separate July 2019 indictment, the release says, charged Pulido Vargas and Alex Nain Saab Moran with laundering about $350 million tied to Venezuela’s government-run currency exchange and a low-income housing contract. The release says they allegedly submitted false import documents for goods that never entered Venezuela, paid bribes to get those documents approved, and wired money to accounts in the Southern District of Florida. The charges there are conspiracy and seven counts of money laundering. All of that is alleged. The release says an indictment is merely an allegation, and that every defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

The release says that before these alleged offenses he had a history of drug trafficking, including a 1997 conviction in Italy under the Rubio Salas alias. The Drug Enforcement Administration’s Miami office, the FBI’s Miami office, and Homeland Security Investigations in Miami are investigating. The department frames the arrest as work of a Homeland Security Task Force under

. A related item on the same release, dated Sept. 15, 2026, says Saab Moran pleaded guilty in a money-laundering case. This story does not reopen that case.

The first appearance is set for the afternoon of Tuesday, Oct. 13, in the Southern District of Florida. The release does not say where he was arrested, or whether the two cases will be heard together.

What is still unknown or disputed

Primary sources

Every claim in this story is drawn from the documents below. If a fetch failed, that is recorded on the card.

  1. Source 1

    Homeland Security Task Force Arrests Alvaro Pulido Vargas to Face Charges in Multibillion-Dollar Venezuelan Money Laundering and Bribery Schemes

    U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs · October 11, 2026

    A Colombian national charged in two separate federal indictments involving the alleged laundering of more than $2 billion in connection with Venezuelan government bribery schemes will make his initial appearance on the afternoon of Tuesday, October 13, in the Southern District of Florida to face federal prosecution.

    https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/homeland-security-task-force-arrests-alvaro-pulido-vargas-face-charges-multibillion-dollar