MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentina, Venezuela seek arrest in suitcase scandal

Antonini became FBI informer and lives safely in Miami

Venezuelan authorities are seeking the detention of a dual Venezuelan-US citizen caught last year in Argentina with a suitcase stuffed with hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash.

The Venezuelan Justice Department announced on Friday that a court has asked local and international police agencies to capture the businessman. Last August, Argentine airport customs officials confiscated nearly 800,000 US dollars from Alejandro Antonini Wilson in a Buenos Aires airport as he arrived aboard an Enarsa (Argentina's government Energy Corporation) chartered flight coming from Caracas. Claudio Uberti, who was number two to Argentina's Federal Planning minister Julio De Vido's, and head of the OCCOVI road transport watchdog â€" who was aboard de Enarsa plane with Antonini Wilson â€" was ousted from his post after Argentine and world media reports linked the money to the presidential campaign of then hopeful Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. Antonini Wilson is currently in Miami cooperating with US authorities there. US prosecutors have accused three Venezuelans and a Uruguayan of acting as illegal agents and pressuring Antonini not to disclose the money's origin. Prosecutors believe the money came from Venezuela and was intended to fund Mrs. Kirchner's campaign. Meanwhile, Argentina has also requested his extradition, to clear uncertainties regarding the origin of the money. According to a Bloomberg News report, Argentina's attempt has been deliberately thwarted by the US government, the defendant's lawyer said. "It appears that the (US) government was stonewalling Argentina about its extradition request'' Edward Shohat, an attorney for Franklin Durán, said at a hearing on Friday in federal court in Miami. Durán is accused of conspiring to silence Antonini Wilson, charged with illegally acting as a spy on US soil. Shohat is seeking to force US prosecutors to turn over any evidence that the US government intervened on Antonini's behalf in the extradition request. US prosecutors said they helped Antonini relocate from his home in Key Biscayne, Florida, and he has cooperated with the Federal Bureau of Investigation by secretly recording Durán and other defendants. "No promises have been made and there has been no wink and no nod" over the extradition request said Shohat. Durán, 40, faces a September 2 trial in Miami on a charge of being an unregistered agent of Venezuela. He was arrested on December 11.