CAPE VERDE
When the Giants Come Calling
To Venezuela, Alex Saab is a diplomat. To the US, he is a fraudster with close ties to Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. To Cape Verde, he’s a legal dilemma.
That diverse viewpoint was highlighted recently when the West African island nation’s Supreme Court ruled that local authorities could extradite Saab to the US, Reuters reported.
American prosecutors have charged Saab with helping Maduro arrange business deals to launder $350 million in violation of the sanctions that the US has imposed on the socialist South American country.
His alleged crimes are connected to a scheme designed to bilk cash from an international food program intended to help Venezuelans who have faced hunger due to Maduro’s mismanagement of the country’s oil-rich economy, explained the Associated Press. He has also helped arrange transactions of Venezuelan gold for Iranian gasoline, Bloomberg added.
Cape Verdean officials detained Saab in June when he made a stopover in the former Portuguese colony. Former President Donald Trump dispatched a US Navy warship to make sure he didn’t escape the country, wrote Al Jazeera.
His arrest could be illegal, however, according to the Court of Justice of the Economic Community of West African States, because Interpol issued a so-called “red notice” for his arrest after he was detained, Agence France-Presse noted.
Saab’s lawyers have vowed to appeal the extradition to Cape Verde’s Constitutional Court. They have also related instructions from Venezuelan leaders that Saab should not discuss any confidential or sensitive information with American officials if he is taken into their custody.
Cape Verde is a stable democracy in Africa – it’s about 400 miles west of the Senegalese coast. Its proximity to Europe and Africa helped it benefit from the slave trade in centuries past. It has few natural resources, however, the Conversation wrote, importing much of its food. The coronavirus pandemic has seriously hurt its most important industry, tourism, according to Deutsche Welle.
Until recent years, it was also largely left alone.
But rivalries between the US, Europe and China have put Cape Verde in the center of a complicated geopolitical web. China is using Cape Verde as a waystation in its globe-spanning Belt and Road Initiative trade network. The US considers the country an important strategic partner.
As the Saab situation demonstrates, however, relevance entails responsibility. “Rather than leaning East or West, therefore, strategically positioning Cape Verde as a pivot between regions will be essential in maintaining competitiveness,” Foreign Policy magazine argued.
That’s a nice problem to have, actually.
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