Venezuela hands over “Fat Leonard”
Written by Nick Blenkey
Flash back to September 2022: Mugshot taken when Leonard Glenn Francis was detained in Venezuela when attempting to board a flight to Russia
When Leonard Glenn Francis, the man at the center of the “Fat Leonard” bribery case that rocked the Navy, last surfaced in public, it was back in September 2022 when he was arrested at the Simon Bolivar International in Caracas, Venezuela. As we reported at that time, he was detained on the basis of an Interpol red notice to await extradition to the United States.
It generally supposed that Venezuela’s Maduras regime would not speed up the extradition but would hang on to Francis as a bargaining chip. Which is exactly what happened – and now he is being handed over to the U.S., as part of a larger prisoner swap deal.
In a background briefing on the swap, earlier this week, a senior administration official had this to say about Leonard:
“As part of this arrangement, Leonard Francis, who is also known as ‘Fat Leonard,’ will be extradited from Venezuela [arrested and returned to the United States] and will be on a plane, hopefully very soon, on his way back to a federal detention facility.
“For those of you who are not familiar with Leonard Francis’s case, he oversaw one of the most brazen bribery conspiracies in the U.S. Navy’s history from 2004 until his arrest until 2013. It was a long-running conspiracy to bribe U.S. Navy officials and employees and other federal employees who were public officials.
“Francis pled guilty. As part of his guilty plea, he admitted that he required his Navy contacts to use their influence to benefit his company by steering contracts to it, by scheduling and directing Navy ships to various ports favored by the company, and by advocating for and advancing the company’s interests with the Navy with respect to the ships’ husbandry issues, and also admitted that he bribed ‘scores‘ of U.S. Navy officials with tens of millions of dollars in fraud and millions of dollars in bribes and gifts, including cash, prostitutes, and luxury travel, things like Cuban cigars, Kobe beef, and Spanish suckling pig.
“While he was pending sentencing on house arrest, he cut off his ankle tracking bracelet and fled to Venezuela, where he was arrested and has been detained as he was about to board a plane to Russia. And his return to the United States will now assure that he is held fully accountable for his crimes as well as for his attempts to escape from justice.”
