
At
least two of the four defendants convicted of
working as illegal foreign
agents in Florida for Venezuelan President
Hugo Chavez in the Suitcase-Gate Scandal had
ties to an international criminal organization which was operating successfully
in Venezuela, and with seeming official impunity, long before Chavez himself
came to power, The MadCowMorningNews has learned.
Both the recently-convicted Franklin Duran, and Carlos Kauffmann, who pled
guilty before the trial, took part in a $7 billion bank scandal during the
mid-1990’s that involved insiders looting Venezuelan banks, and led more than
200 Venezuelan bankers to flee Caracas for exile in Miami.
Duran and Kauffman began their meteoric rise to commanding fortunes, by their
mid-30’s, of $100 million in Kauffmann’s case, and a staggering $800 million in
Duran’s, in the banking scandal.
Also looted, ironically, was the Venezuelan government’s response
to the looting: the government institution to oversee banks and ensure they
weren’t looted again.
"Guido the Bagman" Discovers La Revolution
When
a U.S. jury in Miami recently convicted Venezuelan businessman Franklin Duran in
the Suitcase-Gate Trial, the verdict raised more questions than it answered.
The
scandal, which soon became well-known throughout Latin America, began last year
with the discovery of a mysterious suitcase filled with $800,000 in cash at an
airport in Buenos Aires.
The
$800,000, as well as $4.5 million in cash in a second suitcase which
wasn't discovered, according to testimony in the trial, was a bribe--or,
more charitably, a token of his esteem-- from Venezuela’s President Hugo
Chavez to Nestor Kirchner and wife Cristina, the former and current
Presidents of Argentina, three days in advance of a state visit by Chavez last
year.
Miami "businessman" Guido Antonini Wilson, hereafter known as "Guido the
Bagman," said it was his suitcase. And then began the cover-up attempt
that ended when four Venezuelan men were
eventually convicted of attempting to secure Guido's silence about the source of
the loot.
From the start, observers saw the purpose of the prosecution as being to
embarrass and point a finger at corruption in the government of Venezuela’s
current President (and Bush Administration bete noire) Hugo Chavez.
But while Chavez’s “Bolivarian
revolution” was being singled out by Bush Administration prosecutors as the
source of the corruption, the men acting on Chavez’s behalf have connections
which have so far been ignored to scandals which occurred under past
Venezuelan Presidents as well.
A really bad day in Buenos Aires
In
stories today and over the next two days we will report the results of a
two-month long investigation into the facts behind the Suitcase-Gate Scandal,
and offer a partial reconstruction of what was, for those involved, “a bad
day in Buenos Aires.”
Evidence unearthed to date points to a thorough-going cover-up. Among the items
being concealed:
Details
repeatedly left out or omitted, in both media accounts and in the trial itself,
which would have identified not just the
individuals charged in the case, but also implicated a larger criminal
organization with corrupt ties to previous Venezuelan Presidents for at least
the past two decades.
Among the crucial details being concealed is the role played by the
international criminal organization of Argentine “businessman” Alfredo Yabrán,
widely reported to have international Mafia connections as well as extremely
close ties to the Argentine military juntas responsible for atrocities during
Argentina’s “dirty war” in the 1970's and 80's.
Yabrán later became the Argentine kingmaker behind disgraced former President
Carlos Menem. He was at one time so powerful in Argentina that his picture had
never appeared in a newspaper.
When a photo of him was finally published, he had the journalist who took the
photograph murdered: shot and then burned to death in his car.
Suitcase-Gate jet owned by client of Jack Abramoff
Also
hidden from public view during the trial was the identity of the owner of the
American-registered (N5113S)
top-of-the-line luxury Citation X jet carrying the cash-filled suitcase flight
to Buenos Aires.
As
we reported in our last story, the jet carried the same registration, or" N"
number, as that of a plane flying for Air-Scan, a CIA aviation contractor in
Iraq.
In
tomorrow’s follow-up story, The MadCowMorningNews will publish another
exclusive: the plane’s official FAA registration, which can be traced to a
former major client of disgraced Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
The
plane was owned, the registration records indicate, by a woman who first struck
it rich as a 800-number sex-lines porn mogul, then as an Internet “porn
princess,” and finally as majority owner of one of the world’s most lucrative
online gambling sites.
Today she is an American living in exile in Gibraltar, and one of the world's
wealthiest women.
Her
picture has never appeared in a newspaper, either.
Mafioso connection never heard in court
Another
apparently pivotal player unmentioned at the trial is Alex del Nogal, who fled
Argentina the same day his associate
Guido Antonini Wilson was caught smuggling a cash-stuffed suitcase into Buenos
Aires.
One
month later, Del Nogal was arrested in Italy after an international manhunt. He
was charged, and later convicted, of international narcotics trafficking.
Amazing but true: this particular “Guido associate” had been serving 20 years in
Venezuelan prison for murdering a business rival by shooting him in the head
and then dropping him from a plane into the Caribbean… until being pardoned by
Hugo Chavez in 2001, and appointed to the Venezuelan secret police.
It
had all the elements of a first class spy thriller: An impressive stash of
contraband cash, winging its way to Argentina in the middle of the night, on a
Cessna Citation X luxury business jet, the fastest civilian airplane in history.
And
there was a strong whiff of drug and arms trafficking, made more plausible by
the fact that the Citation is faster than any drug interdiction planes of the
DEA, or, for that matter, of almost any other country in the world
Hezbollah, the U.S. 4th Fleet, & Disinformation
Suitcase-Gate
had real world consequences. Venezuela began staging war games with
Russian forces. Argentina and Bolivia
kicked out their U.S. Ambassadors. Venezuela spent billions of petrodollars on
Russian weapons.
And
Hugo Chavez “reached out,” as they say on the Soprano’s, to Iran,
cultivating warm bilateral relations.
Not
to be out-done, the U.S. Navy reestablished its Fourth Fleet, which had been
disestablished way back in 1950, to oversee U.S. naval activities in Latin
American and Caribbean waters.
And
Western officials began expressing fears that the Iranian-backed terrorist group
Hezbollah is using Venezuela as a base for operations.
What
was going on? Was all this over a lousy
$800 grand?
Did
Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez really spend $30 billion dollars
to win influence in South America? Was Chavez trash-talking Uncle Sam while
sending money and weapons to FARC guerrillas in Colombia? What's the truth about
the charge that Venezuela is doing business with Hezbollah?
Clearly the citizenry of all three countries—the U.S., Venezuela, and Argentina—
deserve to know more.
TOMORROW:
What's Spanish for
"business as usual?"