MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

“Illegal Venezuelan agents” attempting to intimidate a witness

Suicases full of money and no one dares to claim them

The 800,000 dollars cash suitcase scandal extending from Miami to Caracas and Buenos Aires could send three Venezuelans and a Uruguayan, if convicted, to a US federal prison for up to ten years and a 250.000 US dollars fine.

The four men are accused of being illegal Venezuelan agents who attempted a cover up and intimidated a witness who was involved in taking the suitcase to Buenos Aires, allegedly intended as a political contribution for the campaign of Argentine president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, according to US prosecutors in Miami. The complaint filed in federal court in Miami said "neither the true source nor the intended recipient of those cash funds had been disclosed." But Assistant US Attorney Thomas Mulvihill said in court that one of the men charged in the case said in conversations recorded by the FBI that Mrs. Kirchner's campaign was the intended recipient of the money. Charged with failing to register with the US as an agent of a foreign power are Venezuelan citizens Moisés Román Majonica, Franklin Durán and Carlos Kauffmann; and Uruguayan citizen Rodolfo Wanseele. All will remain in custody pending a bail hearing on Monday, with pleas set to be entered on December 28. Kenneth L. Wainstein, Assistant US Attorney General for National Security, said the complaint "outlines an alleged plot by agents of the Venezuelan government to manipulate a US citizen in Miami in an effort to keep the lid on a burgeoning international scandal." Evidence against the men includes FBI tape recordings of conversations between some of them and senior officials in Venezuela's office of the vice-president, intelligence service and Justice Ministry, US federal prosecutors said in court. The conversations allegedly involved how to keep secret the Venezuelan source of the nearly US$800,000 that was brought in a suitcase to Argentina from Venezuela by Antonini. Antonini, who has dual US-Venezuelan citizenship, is not charged in the case and has said through a lawyer that he will cooperate with an Argentine investigation. Majonica and Wanseele asked for the court to appoint them a lawyer at a brief hearing yesterday. The attorney for Durán and Kauffmann, Michael Hacker, said his clients were innocent. Assistant US Attorney Thomas Mulvihill said Durán had an airplane waiting on the tarmac Tuesday at Miami International Airport, just before the men were arrested. That was an indication that some or all of them intended to flee the US, he said. The money was brought into Argentina aboard a plane chartered by Argentina's state energy company, Enarsa. Antonini was accompanied on the plane by Argentine officials and employees of Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA). Antonini has a home on Key Biscayne near Miami and returned there via Montevideo after the money was seized at the airport in Buenos Aires, officials said.