United States Attorney General Todd Blanche confirmed this Sunday the extradition of Colombian Álvaro Pulido Vargas and noted that he faces two federal accusations filed in 2019 and 2021 for alleged Venezuelan money laundering schemes and million-dollar bribes linked to the Nicolás Maduro regime.
Through a publication on her X account, Blanche pointed out that The arrest was carried out by agents of the Homeland Security Task Force (HSTaskForce).
According to the official, Pulido Vargas will have to answer before the US justice system for the charges attributed to him.
“His alleged actions show blatant contempt for the Venezuelan people by corrupting government programs intended to provide food, medicine and housing, for personal enrichment and exploit the American financial system to do so,” Blanche said on the social network.
He added: “No amount of time or distance will stop the Department of Justice from working with our federal law enforcement and international partners to pursue these criminals and bring them to justice in an American court.”
Who is Álvaro Pulido?
Pulido Vargas is actually Germán Enrique Rubio Salas, a man whose capture was reported by the Colombian media in 2000 as the leader of the Bogotá cartel.
According to the police in that country, Rubio Salas coordinated the shipment of two tons of cocaine and 17 kilos of heroin to several European nations in 1999. The newspaper added that the defendant has a pending sentence of 15 years in prison in Italy.
Since 2000 it was known that the person involved used false identifications. In fact, in the press archives we read that used five different identities over two years to enter Brazil, Germany and the United Kingdom, among other destinations.
The investigations of journalists Gerardo Reyes, from Univisión, and the Venezuelan Roberto Deniz, from the portal Armando.inforeported on the name change of the Saab partner. According to Reyes, it was precisely that drug trafficking investigation that led him to change it.
To do this, he would have irregularly reactivated the identity document of a person who died in Miami in 2005.
Within the framework of an investigation that Univisión carried out in 2015, however, Pulido clarified: “My name is Álvaro Enrique Pulido Vargas, I got my ID in 1983 and that has always been my identity.” But he never sent journalists the evidence he promised.
