Guilty plea in Venzuelan funding of Argentina election

NY Times/Houston Chronicle:

A Venezuelan lawyer pleaded guilty in Miami on Friday to his role in a plot to cover up the destination of a suitcase stuffed with $800,000 in cash that U.S. prosecutors say was intended as a campaign contribution from the Venezuelan government to Argentina's president, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner.

The lawyer, Moises Maionica, 36, was one of five foreigners charged in December with conspiring to silence Guido Alejandro Antonini Wilson, a Venezuelan-American businessman caught carrying the suitcase by customs officials in Buenos Aries.

In a case bitterly disputed by the governments of Argentina and Venezuela, a four-month investigation led American prosecutors to charge four Venezuelans and one Uruguayan with conspiracy and with acting as unregistered foreign agents of the Venezuelan government in what they said was a cover-up scheme.

Maionica admitted in federal district court on Friday to having met with Antonini and people suspected of being Venezuelan agents, and to having arranged calls between Antonini and a senior official in Venezuela's intelligence agency, which the FBI said it recorded.

...

Ruben Oliva, Maionica's lawyer, said in court that his client had been in the United States preparing to take a cruise when he received a call from a high-ranking Venezuelan official asking him to help Antonini, according to The Associated Press.

...

The evidence was pretty overwhelming with FBI recordings of the conversations. Perhaps he will cooperate and disclose more about the scheme. The denials from Venezuela and Argentina make both governments look corrupt, which they probably are.

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