Over 25 years of turbulence, the promise of building a five-star hotel next to the Simón Bolívar International Airport in Maiquetía, serving Caracas, has almost been realized several times. In some instances, construction progressed to a degree; in others, it was merely false starts. However, in two of these instances, including the final one, the project was handed over to Álex Saab Morán, the Colombian businessman who acted as the preferred contractor for Nicolás Maduro for many years, and who now serves as the Minister of Industries and National Production and President of the International Center for Productive Investment (CIIP).
It was Maduro himself who finally inaugurated the hotel recently, named Gran Cacique Maiquetía. During the televised event, Maduro enthusiastically described the new lodging as “the most beautiful in the Caribbean.” “Those who built the hotel tell me it features works from Venezuelan artists, and they were inspired by the great Cacique Maiquetía and the beautiful aesthetics of our indigenous peoples,” the president explained, without detailing who he meant by “those who built this hotel” or mentioning the long list of suppliers to whom, for a quarter century, the Chavista state entrusted the task of completing the project, only to be let down.
In reality, bringing the building to completion and getting it operational fell into a scheme that involves both Saab and relatives of the presidential couple, especially Cilia Flores, the First Lady or “First Combatant,” as Chavista jargon prefers to label her.
In fact, Saab is one of those who once failed to deliver. The current scheme echoes partnerships dating back to 2013. At that time, Saab was positioned as a contractor alongside his partner and compatriot, Álvaro Pulido Vargas, through the Global Construction Fund, a company that made its entrance in Venezuela, and which was supposed to receive at least 42 million dollars that year to complete the hotel construction within twelve months.
During that time, Carlos Erick Malpica Flores and Walter Jacob Gavidia Flores, Cilia Flores’ nephew and son, respectively, were awarding multi-million contracts to Saab Morán from the Propatria 2000 Foundation, an entity created by Hugo Chávez to promote infrastructure projects and which Maduro shifted under the control of the Presidential Office shortly after the Eternal Commander passed away.
While the partnership between Saab and the Gavidia-Flores family was repeated for the final stretch of what became the Gran Cacique Maiquetía hotel, it’s essential to note that the roles and participants in the scheme varied a bit: currently, Alex Saab is engaging as president of the CIIP, a state organization that will manage the facility in a “strategic alliance” with the Ministry of Tourism that was announced just weeks ago, whereas Walter Ramón Gavidia Rodríguez, Cilia Flores’ ex-husband and father of Walter Jacob, propelled the last push to complete the construction through the Corporation Juntos Todo es Posible, also tied to the Presidential Office. In other words, things changed to stay the same.
The CIIP was asked to clarify its new functions regarding the Gran Cacique Maiquetía Hotel, but as of this edition’s closing, there had been no response.
The Fivefold Increase in Costs
In 2013, when the project was assigned to Saab Morán and Pulido Vargas’ company, Maduro was still maneuvering to secure power after Hugo Chávez’s death and an improvised election he had won, according to official results, by a narrow margin of just over 1% against opposition candidate Henrique Capriles Radonski. That one of Maduro’s first actions as president was to hand the project over to the Global Construction Fund speaks volumes about the importance he already assigned to Saab, his future minister.
According to the 2013 Ministry of Transport report, the Global Construction Fund C.A. not only had to continue the hotel’s construction, which had begun in 2000, but also create a mixed company with the Maiquetía International Airport Institute (IAIM), where the private sector was to hold a minority stake of 49% in the shares. This company would produce “diagnostics, projects, and the execution of the necessary works for completion, operation, and direct or indirect management,” in addition to the “guidelines for effectively launching the Maiquetía International Airport Hotel.”
The Global Construction Fund assumed the reactivation of “the last stage of construction” with an injection of 134 million bolívares, which translates to 21.3 million dollars at the then-current exchange rate. Of that amount, the state-owned Bolivar Ports (Bolipuertos) disbursed 70 million bolívares (about 11.1 million dollars), according to the aforementioned report.
However, the budget for “management, design, and construction” of the airport hotel completion, which is indicated in internal documents from 2014 of the Global Construction Fund accessed by Armando.info, reveals a change from the amount published by the ministry: 42 million dollars were allocated for the “mixed company” to complete 45,000 square meters of construction in just 12 months. It remains unclear whether Saab Morán and Pulido Vargas’s company received those funds, but it is evident that they did not finish the project.
This was not the only budget increase handled by the Global Construction Fund. When then-Transport Minister, retired Major General Hebert García Plaza, announced the reactivation of works in Vargas state (now La Guaira), he claimed that the hotel would be ready by the end of 2013, with an increased budget of 64 to 300 million bolívares. Thus, the assigned amount was quintupled -at least in discourse- from 10.15 million dollars to 47.6 million dollars, according to that year’s official exchange rate.
The Same Old Thing with a Twist
A review of the National Contractor Registry (RCN) shows that the project to complete the airport hotel in Maiquetía does not appear among the 19 works corresponding to 16 contracts awarded to the Global Construction Fund. However, three other projects in La Guaira (formerly Vargas state) under the administration of the late ex-governor Jorge García Carneiro (2008-2021) do appear: the Carlos ‘Café’ Martínez baseball stadium, home to the Tiburones de La Guaira team, which was renamed after García Carneiro passed away in 2022; the construction of a multipurpose facility serving as a venue for the 2014 South American Beach Sports Games; and the extension of La Playa Avenue to Punta de Mulatos; as well as the construction of a 500 square meter industrial shed in Ciudad Caribia, the unfinished and much-deteriorated model of a socialist community conceived by Hugo Chávez.
The only contract linked to the Maiquetía airport that appears in the RNC was for the “construction of a caney and remodeling of officer rooms located in the Simón Bolívar airport,” assigned by the Bolivarian National Guard (GNB) as the client.
By the end of 2013, the airport hotel had not been delivered. In February 2014, the then-director general of the IAIM, Luis Gustavo Graterol Caraballo, claimed that the construction was at 72% completion and after planning a schedule with the executing companies, the hotel that was to be Venezuela’s first airport hotel would open its doors in the first half of 2015. Something that finally just happened, but a decade later.
In fact, the construction stopped that year. What didn’t stop was the good fortune of the partners of the Global Construction Fund, who would receive 100 million dollars from the Propatria 2000 Foundation, led by Walter Jacob Gavidia Flores, for the construction of 30 vertical gyms in popular areas of the country, many of which were never finished, and others, once completed, would ultimately fall into neglect.
The last contractor presented by the Venezuelan regime as in charge of completing the airport hotel was the Global Construction Fund in 2013. After Saab and Pulido’s company, no other contractor has been mentioned. However, it should be noted that starting in 2014, the Venezuelan state stopped reporting on the project.
Years would pass before this lucky streak was interrupted by a three-year hiatus, starting when Saab was arrested in Cape Verde for extradition to the United States in 2020, until 2023, when he was deported to Venezuela as part of a prisoner exchange with President Joe Biden’s administration in Washington. Meanwhile, Álvaro Pulido Vargas -the alias of the Colombian citizen Germán Rubio- has been in jail since April 2023 due to accusations linked to the so-called Pdvsa-Crypto case.
A Family That Contracts Together Stays Together
Saab’s return to the project, now as President of the CIIP, represents a revival of the team he formed in 2013 with the Gavidia-Flores family, who this time participate through the Corporation Juntos Todo es Posible.
This is a state enterprise that emerged from an amalgamation between a government program of the same name and the Misión Venezuela Bella, both attached to the Presidential Office and Government Management Monitoring, and inheriting guidelines from the now-defunct Propatria 2000 Foundation, which was chaired by Walter Jacob Gavidia Flores and Carlos Erik Malpica Flores, who awarded numerous contracts to Saab.
Saab’s business ties with the Flores family, revealed in 2014, are so strong that when in 2019 the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned the businessman from Barranquilla, it also included the children and nephews of Cilia Flores, identified as the chamos as part of the same commercial scheme.
The Corporation Juntos Todo es Posible, headed by the also-deputy of the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), Walter Ramón Gavidia, was initially created for the maintenance and supervision of community works, according to official announcements. But in August 2025, it was assigned another purpose: the oversight of contractor companies that were putting the final touches on the hotel next to the Maiquetía airport.
Two months before Maduro announced the impending hotel inauguration, the public space recovery program encompassing plazas, parks, and highways morphed under a presidential decree into “an agency that arrives to end bureaucracy,” according to Maduro himself.
However, the Corporation Juntos Todo es Posible started with a prior life. Based at the Hotel León de Oro building on Universidad Avenue in downtown Caracas, it was established as a private company in 2018, with its corporate purpose described as: “Buying, selling, distributing, and marketing un-specialized products.” Nothing related to construction.
During that prelude as a private entity, Carlos José Flores and José Rafael Pérez Pastran served as directors and equal owners, having worked for a recruitment company named PHX SS CA, as indicated in their Venezuelan Social Security Institute (IVSS) records.
José Pérez declined to be interviewed through WhatsApp for this piece.
The Hose Gets Stepped On
Alongside the dealings of Saab and the Gavidia-Flores family is the Touristic Operator Humboldt 1956 CA, which manages the iconic Humboldt Hotel in Ávila National Park, renamed Waraira Repano.
The Touristic Operator Humboldt 1956 will be in charge of managing the Gran Cacique Maiquetía hotel, according to social media narratives and El Pitazo. Its manager, Luis Semprun van Grieken, will oversee operations of the new hotel structure, no longer at 2,200 meters altitude but now at sea level and a bit further north. Armando.Info requested confirmation from the company regarding the assignment but received no response.
The president and majority partner of the Touristic Operator Humboldt 1956, Luis Alberto Hernández Abreu, also owns eight other state contractor companies: Inversiones Van Grieken CA; Constructora X99 CA; Constructora Poyo K CA; Constructora Jedicar CA; Inversiones YV979 CA; Transporte N.F.C CA; Inversiones Aurum, and Grupo 1324 CA. Of these, four are involved in the construction sector.
After executing 19 works related to 13 contracts with the state, according to the RNC, Grupo 1324 has not only changed its management but also its location, moving in February 2025 from Blocks 22 and 23 in the 23 de Enero urbanization in proleterian west Caracas to California street, at the intersection with Mucuchíes in the Las Mercedes urbanization, the VIP entertainment quarter and luxury consumption area in the southeast of the city.
Among its public clients are the Ministry of Transport, Corpomiranda, Río Tuy Development Corporation, and Vialidad y Construcciones Sucre S.A. It has also signed contracts with private companies like Constructora X99 (which it owns) and Inversiones Alfamaq, whose president and majority partner is Alejandro Jesús Ceballos Jiménez, who has multiple contracts with the state, also linked to the construction industry.
Grupo 1324 has also worked for the entity that oversees the Gran Cacique Maiquetía hotel. From July 2020 to April 2025, Grupo 1324 carried out the contract for “Maintenance and Repairs” for the Misión Venezuela Bella Foundation, a program established in 2019 by Maduro for the recovery of public spaces, which, at least until January 2025, was chaired by Jacqueline Farías, former head of the Capital District government.
A web of collusions making the slogan “Together, everything is possible” a reality. But only when those coming together have last names like Saab or Gavidia-Flores.