Posted on 01/12/2008 11:08:24 AM PST by ECM
CARACAS, Venezuela — One day last August, an airport policewoman in Buenos Aires noticed something peculiar as she was monitoring a baggage scanner: the appearance of six perfect, dense rectangles inside a suitcase.
She asked the passenger, Guido Alejandro Antonini Wilson, one of eight people aboard a private plane chartered by Argentina’s national oil company that flew from Caracas, to open the case. “He became frozen and did not say a word,” the policewoman later said in a radio interview.
When he did open it, nearly $800,000 in cash spilled out.
Mr. Antonini, a businessman with Venezuelan and American citizenship, is now at the center of a spy mystery and diplomatic imbroglio involving Argentina, Venezuela and the United States. American officials portray the episode as a rare glimpse into President Hugo Chávez’s use of oil wealth to spread his influence, saying the cash was destined for the campaign of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, Argentina’s new president.
Venezuela and Argentina describe it as an amateurish American attempt to smear their governments. Mrs. Kirchner has called the case a “garbage operation” by Americans, while Venezuela’s official news agency claimed this week that it was a plot by the Central Intelligence Agency.
But American investigators, in court documents, say a concealed recording device they persuaded Mr. Antonini to wear after the cash was seized revealed that Venezuelan spies and businessmen threatened and pressured him to cover up the destination of the cash.
The United States attorney in Miami is prosecuting those men for failing to register as foreign agents. The case hinges on a charge that four Venezuelans and one Uruguayan in south Florida tried to cover up an operation gone badly awry and to prevent Mr. Antonini from going public.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Hmmmmmm, maybe Cindy Sheehan is Hugo’s “mule” after all.
It takes the reporter a while, and a few hundred words of obfuscation, to get around to the true point of the story. Does anyone with working brain parts really doubt what went on here and who is behind this?
What will be interesting is, when it all comes out, how the world reacts (particularly the thug in Caracas and his bought-and-paid-for political whore in Buenos Aires and how they’ll squirm, twist, and contort to obscure the facts.)
It probably involves the Clintonistas so you’ll never hear anymore about it.
Ahh, corruption in Argentina. So, what’s new?
I guess they didn’t have enough locally, so they had to import some ;)
If she’s his ass, he’ll need to buy Preparation H by the carton.
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