Criminal charges have been brought by federal prosecutors in the United States against an alleged Venezuelan corruption ring accused of paying millions of dollars in bribes to profit from lucrative contracts to import food and medicine at a time of an economic collapse in the country.

Former Governor Jose Gregorio Vielma Mora and associates of Alex Saab, a businessman extradited this week to face criminal charges in Miami in a separate corruption scheme, are among the five individuals charged in an indictment that was brought in on Thursday.

The indictment does not name Saab but includes his longtime business partner and fugitive co-defendant in the earlier case, fellow Colombian Alvaro Pulido.

 Pulido’s son was also indicted and so were the two other individuals, Carlos Lizcano and Ana Guillermo. Lizcano and Guillermo allegedly helped establish a network of shell companies and bank accounts spanning offshore financial havens like Hong Kong, Antigua, Panama, and the United Arab Emirates. These companies received more than $1 billion from Venezuelan state coffers between 2016 and 2018 for the purchase of food and medicine.

The indictment centers around the so-called CLAP program set up by Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to provide basic food staples — rice, cornflour, cooking oil — to poor Venezuelans struggling to feed themselves amid hyperinflation and a crumbling currency.

Governor Vielma Mora allegedly hired a company in 2016 controlled by Pulido to import to the western state of Tachira from Mexico 10 million food boxes at $34 per box. He allegedly did so knowing that the real cost of purchasing and sending the boxes to Venezuela was far less and demanded kickbacks from two unnamed co-conspirators to sign off on the deal, the Associated Press reported.

One of the unnamed co-conspirators was Saab, according to a person familiar with the investigation on the condition of anonymity to discuss the probe.

Vielma Mora allegedly received $17.2 million in bribes in exchange for the food contracts, prosecutors said.

There was no immediate response from Vielma-Mora, who was previously sanctioned by the Trump administration for his involvement in the same alleged corruption scheme.

(With AP inputs)