Word: chavez
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...behest of "high-level" Venezuelan government officials, cajoled and even threatened Antonini to keep mum about the real purpose of all that cash: an illegal contribution from Venezuela to the presidential campaign of then Argentine Senator and First Lady Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, a Chavez ally. One of the men, Moises Maionica, pleaded guilty in January; one is at large and another - Carlos Kauffman, a close Duran pal - pleaded guilty in March, leaving Duran all but alone to face trial in Miami that began this week...
Both backers and critics of Chavez say the radical left-wing Venezuelan President is tacitly on trial himself. It's no secret that Chavez, who controls the hemisphere's largest oil reserves, lavishes billions of dollars in foreign aid on allies to promote his anti-U.S. Bolivarian Revolution. Foes have long groused that his largesse can also be as shadowy as the covert U.S. operations Chavez accuses agencies like the CIA of perpetrating. They contend that he has funneled cash to leftist candidates in presidential races from Bolivia to Mexico, and that he has helped fund Marxist guerrillas like...
...wasn't until Antonini's luggage was opened in 2007 - and until Colombian authorities claimed last spring that seized guerrilla laptops revealed Chavez payments of as much as $300 million to the FARC - that alleged evidence of Caracas' covert dealings had ever surfaced. The top prosecutor on the Antonini case, Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Mulvihill, has said in hearings that conversations recorded by an FBI wire that Antonini wore prove the suitcase money "was meant for the campaign of Cristina [Fernandez]." And according to court documents filed this summer, Kauffman is expected to testify they were told by high-level...
...question Chavez supporters ask is why Fernandez would even need his cash when she held a more than 20-point lead in voter polls leading up to last October's election, which she won handily. When the campaign contribution allegation was made shortly after her inauguration, she took it as a Yanqui affront to her own government and angrily called the case a "garbage operation." The Casa Rosada, the Argentine presidential palace, insists instead that the U.S. should extradite Antonini to Argentina...
Indeed, the acid relationship between Chavez and the U.S. has also thrown the Bush Administration's motives into doubt. Thomas Shannon, U.S. assistant secretary of state for western hemisphere affairs, has insisted the indictments stem purely from "a judicial process" and not politics. Venezuela and defense lawyers claim otherwise. Chavez, who accuses the White House of backing a failed 2002 coup against him, calls the case "part of the U.S. empire's plan" to smear him. Duran's attorney, Edward Shohat, argues that the statute at play - acting, or conspiring to act, as a foreign agent without permission - has been...