Chavez tied to Argentine bribe scandal coverup

Miami Herald:

Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez was personally involved in efforts to conceal his nation's participation in the scandal surrounding a briefcase that contained $800,000, according to testimony obtained by the FBI and presented last week in Miami federal court.

The money, confiscated by Argentine customs officials, was allegedly to be a campaign contribution to that nation's current president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.

According to the court documents submitted on June 27, Venezuelan businessman Franklin Durán declared that his former associate Carlos Kauffman pointed the finger at Chávez during his deposition to the FBI, citing several sources.

Both Durán and Kauffman have been implicated in the case and are accused of acting as unregistered agents of the Venezuelan government.

In his testimony, Kauffman told the FBI that lawyer Moisés Maionica assured him that, ``President Chávez was involved in the matter and that he had placed DISIP [Venezuela's intelligence service] director [Henry] Rangel Silva in charge; and that Rangel told him that President Chávez was personally involved in the case.''

This is the first time that the Venezuelan president has been directly implicated with the briefcase scandal.

Until now, the evidence presented in court only implicated the director of the DISIP and the office of Vice President Jorge Rodríguez.

According to Durán's lawyer, Edward Shohat, Kauffman's testimony implicating Chávez will be used to prove that Durán was acting as an unregistered agent of the Venezuelan government in the United States.

...

This is not particularly surprising since it would be unusual for such a large amount of money to be transferred without his knowledge. The chances are remote that it will be used to indict him in the US. Chavez big worry right now is being indicted over his activity with FARC and his facilitating the transshipment of drugs out of Colombia through Venezuela to Africa and Europe.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Washington Post: Some Democrats eye adding more justices to the Supreme Court to change its ideological bent The once-remote idea has gained the attention of liberals angered by the GOP push to remake the federal courts. Probably the easy way to defeat this court-packing scheme is for Trump to propose doing the same thing now.  It would lead to Democrat denunciations and claims that it would be wrong, thereby blowing up any attempt by them in the unfortunate event of Democrats winning a presidential election.
Read more

29 % of companies say they are unlikely to keep insurance after Obamacare

Conn Carroll: A new survey of 368 midsize to large companies found that 29% of them are considering terminating their active employee health care plans when Obamacare is full implemented in 2014. Only 71% of employers surveyed said they did not expect to drop their health coverage, while 20% said they did not know and 9% said they were planning to exit. The latest survey, conducted by Towers Watson, echoes an ealier survey by McKinsey & Co. finding that 30% of private-sector employers were planning to drop their employee health insurance coverage by 2014. When the Congressional Budget Office crunched Obamacare's spending numbers, they estimated that only 7% of employees currently covered by employer-sponsored plans would lose their plans. ... This means the cost of the health care fiasco will be hundreds of billions more than estimated by the CBO and Congressional Democrat. It is also clear that Obama's pledge that you could keep your health care plan if you wanted t
Read more

Bin Laden's concern about Zarqawi's remains

James Robbins: ... Bin Laden suggests that President Bush should allow Zarqawi’s body to be returned to his family in Jordan, but this is a matter that is up to the Jordanian government, which so far has not shown much interest in facilitating a homecoming. Bin Laden mocks King Abdullah II, calling him a Coalition minion, and asking “w hat scares you about Abu Musab after he’s dead? You know that his funeral, if allowed to happen, would be a huge funeral showing the extent of sympathy with the mujahedin.” A large crowd would definitely turn out, though most people would be on hand to demonstrate their anger and disgust. Last November’s hotel bombings in Amman , masterminded by Zarqawi, are still fresh in people’s memory, and mentioning them to Jordanians has the same visceral impact as memory of the 9/11 attacks does here. Jordan has adopted a zero-tolerance policy towards those who choose to mourn the country’s least favorite son, and four opposition members of parliament who paid con
Read more