The Washington Post reports that Leonard Glenn Francis, known as “Fat Leonard,” the fugitive defense contractor who admitted to a $35 million bribery scheme in the largest corruption scandal in U.S. military history, has been arrested and returned by Venezuela to the United States as part of a major prisoner swap between the estranged countries, President Biden said Wednesday. 
 
Venezuela is also releasing 10 Americans detained by the government of Nicolás Maduro, Biden said.

Biden, in exchange, has agreed to grant clemency to Alex Saab, a close Maduro ally who was awaiting trial in Miami on federal money laundering charges, senior administration officials said. The businessman, whom federal prosecutors consider a corrupt enabler of Venezuela’s authoritarian socialist government, is accused of siphoning off hundreds of millions of dollars in state contracts.

In addition to the 10 Americans, Maduro is releasing 20 Venezuelan political prisoners as part of an agreement reached in October between the Venezuelan government and opposition leaders.

The senior administration official said Biden made the “extremely difficult decision” to grant clemency to Saab to bring Americans home and to “ensure that one of the most notorious fugitives from justice, Fat Leonard, is returned and held to account for his crimes.”

In early September 2002, just weeks before his sentencing in a decade-long Navy bribery and corruption scandal, Leonard Glenn Francis, known as “Fat Leonard,” escaped from house arrest in his San Diego home and fled the country. The Malaysian businessman is the center of the largest bribery scandal in US Navy history. Authorities in Venezuela arrested “Fat Leonard” Francis as he attempted to board a plane to Russia, officials said.

At last count, the long-running fraud and bribery investigation regarding Fat Leonard has resulted in federal criminal charges against 34 U.S. Navy officials, with 33 defendants convicted of various fraud and corruption offenses.