CARACAS – The Venezuelan Attorney General’s Office said Monday that a businessman accused of fraud was arrested near Miami.

Authorities here are negotiating the repatriation of Eligio Cedeño to Venezuela from the United States, the AG office said in an official communique.

Hours before the announcement, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez mentioned Cedeño’s arrest in the U.S. and asked the judiciary to hasten the procedures for requesting his being handed over to this country.

The leftist head of state offered the information during the official inauguration ceremony of the new state-run bank, the Bicentenario Banco Universal.

Chavez recalled that Cedeño “left Venezuela illegally” after Judge Maria Lourdes Afiuni gave him a pre-trial release on Dec. 10.

Afiuni was arrested the same day on charges she acted illegally in granting bail to the businessman.

Chavez urged that Judge Afiuni receive the “maximum sentence of 30 years,” considering that she “is a bandit” for freeing the accused as part of a suspected escape plan.

Prosecutors accused Cedeño in 2005 of helping a local firm, Consorcio Microstar, to obtain $27 million in dollars from the government currency-control agency to purchase computer equipment that never entered the country. EFE