“Fat Leonard” was in denial until the bitter end.
Until Wednesday, when Venezuelan officials turned him over to the United States, the Malaysian military contractor at the center of the largest bribery and corruption scandal in U.S. Navy history believed he would be set free in the South American nation, where he’d been captured and detained since September 2022 after fleeing house arrest in San Diego.
Marco Rodríguez-Acosta, his Venezuelan attorney, can’t understand why Leonard Glenn Francis did not grasp the reality of his situation. The attorney said Francis, 59, was simply unwilling to believe he’d be used as a pawn in the geopolitical maneuvering between the U.S. and Venezuela.
Francis, nicknamed because of his girth, had requested asylum in Venezuela, and despite more than a year in the custody of the country’s intelligence service at an infamous Caracas prison, he believed he’d be released from custody in early January.
“Someone tricked him,” Rodríguez-Acosta said in Spanish Thursday from Venezuela. “He believed the U.S. had no interest in him … He didn’t believe that (Venezuelan President Nicolás) Maduro believed he was a bargaining chip.”
The attorney was surprised, he said, that someone as intelligent as Francis had been so thoroughly duped. He doesn’t know who deceived his client.
Francis’ sudden and stunning return was part of a prisoner swap that saw Venezuela release 36 detainees — including Francis, 10 U.S. citizens and Venezuelan dissidents — in exchange for Maduro ally Alex Saab, a Colombian businessman who faced money-laundering charges in Miami.
Now, Francis is back in the U.S., where he faces sentencing in the fraud and corruption scheme, and likely new charges related to his escape.
He appeared Thursday in U.S. District Court in Miami, where he told a judge “not right now” when she asked if he had money to retain an attorney. He waived his right to any further hearings in Florida, and the judge signed an order directing U.S. marshals to transport him back to San Diego. It’s the city where he was first arrested more than 10 years ago, also after being tricked — that time as part of a federal sting operation.
Francis pleaded guilty to conspiracy and bribery charges in 2015, admitting to defrauding the Navy out of at least $35 million, and he turned government witness. In hours of interviews with prosecutors, he recounted how he showered Navy officers with gifts of fancy meals, prostitutes, high-end hotel rooms and other perks in exchange for insider information about ship movements in the western Pacific’s Seventh Fleet.
The same officers helped steer Navy contracts to Francis and his company, Glenn Defense Marine Asia, which controlled ports around Southeast Asia where Francis could jack up the prices of routine services.
From 2004 to 2012, federal investigators opened 14 separate probes stemming from complaints about GDMA’s business practices, but most were closed. Another 10 criminal intelligence reports were produced and distributed. But Francis, who had a mole in the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, appeared able to stay one step ahead of law enforcement.
Then in September 2013, Navy officials summoned him to San Diego, ostensibly to discuss how to save money on port visits. It was a ruse. During his stay, armed federal agents burst into his downtown hotel room and arrested him.
For years, with his help, prosecutors racked up guilty pleas from the Navy officers who Francis corrupted. But his return to the U.S. comes at an interesting time for the prosecution, which in recent months has admitted “serious errors” involving evidence and faced harsh criticism from defense attorneys and U.S. District Judge Janis Sammartino over prosecutorial misconduct.
On the same day Francis was extradited, Sammartino said the public “deserves to understand what happened” to lead prosecutors to vacate the trial convictions of four officers and seek to dismiss or reduce the charges against five others. She added that she is “concerned about the totality of this case.”
Where that leaves Francis, who was weeks away from sentencing when he fled house arrest, remains to be seen.
Abandoned legal strategy
Rodríguez-Acosta said he last met with Francis in person in mid-November. He said their plan up until that meeting was to file a petition claiming Francis was being wrongfully detained, since he was not charged with breaking Venezuelan law and the U.S. had not sought his extradition. The U.S. does not have formal diplomatic relations with Maduro’s government. But during the meeting, Francis asked his attorney not to move forward with that strategy, believing he was on the verge of regaining his freedom.
The Washington Post reported that as recently as Monday, Francis texted at least two people expressing that same optimism.
Rodríguez-Acosta said there was no legal proceeding leading up to Francis being sent back to the U.S., no opportunity for him or his client to object. He called the swap illegal and unconstitutional.
“This fact represents a hard blow for those who still trust in the independence of powers, not in Venezuela of course, but in the United States of America,” he wrote in a message.
For those who study Venezuela and its fraught relationship with the U.S., Wednesday’s prisoner swap fit into a much broader picture of recent negotiations and backdoor diplomacy between the two nations. In October, the White House agreed to suspend some sanctions against Venezuela following a commitment by Maduro to work toward free and fair conditions for the 2024 presidential election.
“The Venezuelans knew that (in Francis), they had an additional (bargaining) chip,” said Brian Fonseca, director of the Institute for Public Policy at Florida International University’s School of International and Public Affairs.
But exactly how valuable a chip Francis was is unclear, considering he was just one of three dozen prisoners Maduro’s government released in exchange for Saab.
“The U.S. extracted more from Venezuela than Venezuela needed to give up in the deal — this one does favor the U.S.,” Fonseca said. “Priority No. 1 was to get the innocent people home. Priority No. 2 was continue to pursue justice against (Francis). The U.S. went even further, securing the release of Venezuelans. But Francis was always in the discussion. The minute he stepped foot in Venezuela, he was on the table.”
Fonseca said it was particularly interesting that the swap involved both Francis and Saab since both faced federal charges, but Francis was the one accused of crimes more directly related to the U.S.
“This allows the U.S. government to administer justice to someone that breached U.S. national security interests, rather than someone accused of stealing $350 million from Venezuela,” Fonseca said.
‘Certainly not a hotel’
Ricardo Vaz, a writer and editor with the website Venezuelanalysis.com, said Francis’ case had faded from the news in Venezuela until last month, when the outlet EL estímulo reported that Francis was being used as a bargaining chip in the negotiations to return Saab to Venezuela.
The story offered the first significant glimpse at Francis’ life in Venezuelan custody. Rodríguez-Acosta confirmed those details Thursday.
He said his client was a prisoner of the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service, Venezuela’s internal intelligence agency known by its Spanish acronym SEBIN. Francis was designated a “protected prisoner” and held in relatively good conditions with other high-profile prisoners at El Helicoide, a notorious prison that also serves as SEBIN’s headquarters. El Helicoide is built on a small hill and shaped like a tiered pyramid, with miles of spiraling ramps, and was once supposed to be a drive-thru shopping mall.
While former prisoners have described heinous conditions at El Helicoide, Rodríguez-Acosta said Francis was detained in the “VIP” part where prisoners enjoy more freedoms and some of the cells have air conditioning.
“It’s certainly not a hotel,” Rodríguez-Acosta said. “But it has more or less acceptable conditions.”
The attorney said he faced several obstacles before he was even allowed to represent Francis, spending roughly nine months fighting a legal battle against Venezuelan authorities and the justice system before he was finally allowed to meet and represent him.
As far as the attorney knows, his client was never interrogated by SEBIN. “He was never a person of interest” to Maduro’s government except as a bargaining chip in the Saab negotiations, Rodríguez-Acosta said.
Vaz agreed.
“I think from the delays and obstacles in his legal case it was clear that the Maduro government was not going to alienate the U.S. any further by giving Leonard asylum or safe passage,” Vaz wrote in an email. “And in that case all that was left was for him to be included in an exchange like the one we saw (Wednesday).”
Like the attorney, Vaz said, “It was definitely a violation of his rights that he remained in custody for so long.”
Rodríguez-Acosta said he would bring Francis groceries and medicine when he visited him. He said Francis underwent a medical exam early on during his detention but received little medical care thereafter. He said Francis was dealing with knee issues because of his weight, as well as symptoms of diabetes and other medical issues that would reasonably be expected of a person of Francis’ size and age.
Francis stands 6-foot-3 and once weighed well over 350 pounds, though it’s believed he lost some weight over the years. The attorney said that throughout his time in Venezuelan custody, Francis lost only a little bit of weight and clocked in around 140 kilograms — about 308 pounds.
