Maduro appoints Alex Saab as the new Minister of Industry and National Production

( Spanish) – The president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, announced this Friday that businessman Alex Saab will be the new Minister of Popular Power for Industry and National Production, replacing Pedro Tellechea, who made his resignation public in a publication on X.

Saab, a close ally of Maduro, was released by the United States Government in 2023 after spending two years detained on a charge of conspiracy to commit money laundering. In exchange, Venezuela released 10 Americans detained for various reasons in the country.

“I am sure that, with his great management capacity and commitment to our people, he will promote the development of the entire industrial system of Venezuela, within the framework of the process of building the new economic model. All the support for the immense task that he has to accomplish,” Maduro said about Saab in a publication on social networks.

Saab comes to public office as a Colombian businessman who has Venezuelan citizenship. It is not the first case. At the end of August, the Government of Venezuela also appointed Leticia Gómez Hernández, born in Cuba and naturalized Venezuelan, as Minister of Tourism.

Venezuelan law establishes that, to hold office, candidates must be Venezuelans.

In a message he published this Friday on the social network X, Tellechea thanked him for the opportunity to have held the position until now. He explained that his resignation was due to health problems.