The Chavez bagman trial

Observer/Guardian:

A suitcase filled with $800,000 in cash has embroiled Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez in a scandal which has fuelled claims of corruption and cover-up at the heart of his self-styled socialist revolution.

A court case involving wiretaps and explosive testimony has lifted the lid on alleged attempts to buy influence across Latin America, putting Chávez on the defensive during a torrid week of coup rumours and expulsions of human rights critics and the US ambassador.

Tumbling oil prices compounded the anxiety in Caracas, which is almost wholly reliant on oil revenues, and prompted the President to warn that the government would rein in its free-spending ways.

Chávez's most immediate headache came from a federal court in Miami which heard that Venezuela tried to funnel slush money to Argentina's President, Cristina Kirchner, for her successful election campaign last year. The Presidents denounced the story, which has been front-page news in both countries, as a 'garbage' attempt by Washington to smear South America's so-called 'pink tide' of left-wing leaders.

The story broke in August 2007 when an aircraft chartered by Venezuela's state-owned oil company, Pdvsa, landed in Buenos Aires and a customs official discovered a Venezuelan-American businessman, Guido Antonini, wheeling a suitcase containing $800,000 (£436,441). Antonini fled to Miami, where he collaborated with the FBI and said the money was clandestine funding for Kirchner's election. It is alleged that Venezuelan agents, under orders from Chávez and his intelligence chief, General Henry Rangel Silva, tried to buy the businessman's silence with $2m. But Antonini was wearing an FBI wire and four of the men were arrested in Miami.

At the trial of one of them, Franklin Durán, who is accused of conspiracy and acting as an unauthorised agent of a foreign government, a jury heard recordings, running to 155 pages of transcripts, of the alleged plot and cover-up.

In addition to funding his Argentine ally, it is claimed Chávez, raiding the bulging vaults of the state oil company, paid other governments to back Venezuela's unsuccessful bid for a UN Security Council seat in 2006. The secretly recorded conversations' breezy references to greed and shadowy deals in Chávez's administration have been cited by Venezuela's opposition as proof of high-level corruption. The case has been dubbed 'Maletagate', after the Spanish word for suitcase, maleta.

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The revelations from Miami fed a febrile atmosphere in Caracas, which has had a dramatic 10 days. Last Thursday the government expelled two senior members from Human Rights Watch, the New York-based advocacy group, hours after they presented a damning report of Chávez's decade in power. José Miguel Vivanco and Daniel Wilkinson were intercepted at their hotel, escorted to the airport and put on the first outward bound flight, which was to Brazil.

'This is further evidence of Venezuela's descent into intolerance,' said Kenneth Roth, the group's executive director. 'Chávez may have kicked out the messenger, but he has only reinforced the message - civil liberties in Venezuela are under attack.'

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The latest Bolivian and Venezuelan coup claims were ploys, said Adam Isacson, of the Centre for International Policy, a Washington-based think-tank. 'Don't believe for a moment that either expulsion had anything to do with an imminent danger of aggression from a waning US administration already in way over its head in the Middle East and with Russia. We have here two leaders badly in need of an external threat to rally their domestic bases.'

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The new information in this story is the payments Chavez made to secure votes for a UN seat. It raises the question of whether Iran is doing the same thing this time. What seems undeniable is the corruption in the Chavez government. This just ads to his deals with the narco terrorist to facilitate drug shipments to Africa and Europe.