The Washington Publish stories that Leonard Glenn Francis, often called “Fats Leonard,” the fugitive protection contractor who admitted to a $35 million bribery scheme within the largest corruption scandal in U.S. navy historical past, has been arrested and returned by Venezuela to the US as a part of a serious prisoner swap between the estranged international locations, President Biden stated Wednesday.
Venezuela can be releasing 10 People detained by the federal government of Nicolás Maduro, Biden stated.
Biden, in trade, has agreed to grant clemency to Alex Saab, a detailed Maduro ally who was awaiting trial in Miami on federal cash laundering fees, senior administration officers stated. The businessman, whom federal prosecutors take into account a corrupt enabler of Venezuela’s authoritarian socialist authorities, is accused of siphoning off a whole lot of thousands and thousands of {dollars} in state contracts.
Along with the ten People, Maduro is releasing 20 Venezuelan political prisoners as a part of an settlement reached in October between the Venezuelan authorities and opposition leaders.
The senior administration official stated Biden made the “extraordinarily troublesome determination” to grant clemency to Saab to convey People residence and to “be certain that one of the vital infamous fugitives from justice, Fats Leonard, is returned and held to account for his crimes.”
In early September 2002, simply weeks earlier than his sentencing in a decade-long Navy bribery and corruption scandal, Leonard Glenn Francis, often called “Fats Leonard,” escaped from home arrest in his San Diego residence and fled the nation. The Malaysian businessman is the middle of the largest bribery scandal in US Navy historical past. Authorities in Venezuela arrested “Fats Leonard” Francis as he tried to board a aircraft to Russia, officers stated.
Finally rely, the long-running fraud and bribery investigation relating to Fats Leonard has resulted in federal prison fees in opposition to 34 U.S. Navy officers, with 33 defendants convicted of varied fraud and corruption offenses.
