Word: argentinas
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...trouble started on Aug. 4 when Venezuelan-American businessman Guido Alejandro Antonini Wilson's luggage inadvertently went through standard scanning procedures, instead of being exempt from such an examination because he was a VIP returning from Caracas on a flight chartered by Argentina's state oil company. As a result of the scan, customs officials at Buenos Aires' Newberry airport found a bag stuffed with $790,550 in unmarked $50 bills. The other passengers on the plane were seven Argentine and Venezuelan oil officials who had been in Caracas negotiating the bond and gas plant deals...
...proof that Chavez was buying the support of the Kirchner government. "This is the proof of the corruption of this government," said Elisa Carrio, the main opposition candidate in the presidential campaign. The unseemliness of the airport discovery was not mitigated by Antonini Wilson's immediate flight from Argentina, apparently for Key Biscayne, Florida, where he maintains an apartment. A warrant has now been issued for his arrest by an Argentine court...
...absolute falsehood that the $800,000 had anything to do with functionaries of our government," Chavez told reporters in Buenos Aires when he visited two weeks ago, just after the affair came to light. For its part the Venezuelan state oil company - which has a branch in Argentina - denied any connection between itself and Antonini Wilson. However, news reports in Argentina and neighboring Uruguay claimed that Antonini Wilson's hotel bills and other expenses in the Uruguayan capital of Montevideo - just across the river from Buenos Aires - had been paid for by the Venezuelan company...
Even before he arrived on his state visit, the Kirchners demanded that Chavez dismiss his state oil company's representatives in Argentina, which the Venezuelan president complied with only belatedly last Friday, Aug. 17. In more damage control, they got the resignation of Argentine road toll authority chief Claudio Uberti, a fellow passenger who allowed Antonini Wilson to board the plane...
Kirchner opponents wary of the Venezuelan President's cozy relations with Cuba and Iran have seized on an issue that may slow down what seemed to be Senator Kirchner's inevitable rise to the Presidency. The daily Clarin, Argentina's most widely read newspaper, carried an op-ed piece by one of its top editors, Ricardo Kirschbaum, calling the suitcase affair "one of the greatest misfortunes" in Mrs. Kirchner's campaign, stating that "Hugo Chavez is one of the core themes in the electoral campaign...