Venezuela’s interim president Delcy Rodriguez has appointed a US-educated banker to head the South American country’s major investment agency, as she sacked a close ally of her ousted predecessor Nicolas Maduro.
Rodriguez said she dismissed Alex Saab, a Colombian-born Venezuelan businessman, from the International Center for Productive Investment (CIIP), which is responsible for attracting foreign investment.
The move marks another possible signal to Washington that Venezuela is adopting a more cooperative stance regarding its energy sector and American oil companies eyeing a return to the country.
Late Monday she announced Saab’s replacement as Calixto Ortega, a former Venezuelan central bank president and ex-diplomat once posted to Houston — the Texas city at the center of the US oil refining industry.
Ortega’s appointment “will allow the continued attraction of national and international investment for the national productive system in this stage of economic recovery,” Rodriguez posted on X.
Installing Ortega in the role could be aimed at smoothing relations between Caracas and the US energy industry after President Donald Trump ordered the raid which captured Maduro and his wife and brought them to New York to face trial on drug-trafficking charges.
Trump has said Washington now controls Venezuela, and he supports Rodriguez as the country’s new president so long as she toes the line on US access to Venezuela’s vast oil reserves.
He has said he expects American oil companies to make a high-profile return to Venezuela.
Saab’s ouster comes days after Rodriguez also sacked him from the post of industry minister, a job Maduro appointed him to in October 2024 shortly after his release from the United States as part of a prisoner exchange.
Washington had accused Saab of money laundering. He had become close to Venezuela’s government in the final years of leftist firebrand Hugo Chavez’s 1999-2013 presidency and then managed a vast import network for Maduro’s administration.
Rodriguez, furthering the changes she has made as Venezuela’s new leader after serving as vice president under Maduro, also announced the appointment of a new health minister.
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