Posted on 08/10/2007 6:26:24 AM PDT by 3AngelaD
Cash on Flight From Venezuela Spurs Talk of Official Scandal -- BUENOS AIRES, Aug. 9 -- Days after authorities discovered a suitcase full of nearly $800,000 that had been taken on a private airplane carrying Argentine and Venezuelan officials, one of those officials has resigned and suspicions of a government scandal have grown.
A Venezuelan businessman was detained at a Buenos Aires airport Saturday when customs officials found $790,550 in undeclared cash in his luggage. The incident preceded Monday's arrival here of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, leading to questions about the possibility of a link between the businessman and the Venezuelan or Argentine governments.
Chávez denied any connection, while Argentine officials initially declined to comment on the case.
But as an investigation by the local news media simmered throughout the week and a witness accused Argentine officials of accompanying the businessman, Argentina's state oil company, Energia Argentina SA, or Enarsa, released a statement Wednesday night revealing that it had chartered the small plane.
The statement named the businessman, Alejandro Antonini Wilson, and listed his seven traveling companions: the president of Enarsa, two Argentine Planning Ministry officials and executives from Venezuela's state oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela SA, or PDVSA.
The Argentine officials had been in Caracas to work on an energy deal between the two countries, according to the statement. Enarsa officials stated that they did not know Wilson and that he had boarded the plane as a guest of the son of a PDVSA vice president...
During a news conference Monday, Chávez said the emerging suspicions that Wilson had ties to the Venezuelan government were "absolutely false," and he blamed the incident on the United States. "It is part of the plan of the empire to disrupt our travels," Chavez told reporters...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Alejandro Antonini Wilson is a resident of Florida.
It boggles the mind how the US could be involved. Maybe Sean Penn accidentally left the money there.
Chavez is like all the other tinpot dictators, stealing from the treasury and the producers and feathering his own nest.
Rove!!!!!
Chavez bribes people with cash?
Is he related to Joseph Wilson? It sounds a lot like Joe’s MO.
This moronic, tinhorn dictator is becoming more and more delusional.
There are truly some people in this world that have excrement in their skulls, rather than brain matter.
The real question, however, is did he have a Monkey under his hat???
Maybe his Visa check card has a $100,000 limit.
Bribe or drug money.
More severe scandal over cash-stuffed suitcase creates uproar in Argentina, Venezuela that involves France president Sarkozy.
Do you know that the money that was found in Argentina was only a part of the money that Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez is sending to the FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia) as a part of the negotiations for Ingrid Betancourt’s liberation?????.
If Hugo Chavez Frias could arrange with the FARC Betancourt’s freedom, then he could help she as a new president candidate in Colombia and get one more “dependent president” in South America to became the Mercosur monarch and continue his fight to the US.
Te money sent via Argentina has a Colombian final destination, via Argentina >> Uruguay >> Bolivia >> Colombia, and the carrier was Guido Alejandro Antonini Wilson, a well known arms dealer based in Miami strongly related to the FARC.
Why nobody investigate for similar money routes between this South American countries that has it’s origin in Caracas and ends in Colombia (FARC)??????
Recently the same thing happened in Bolivia few weeks ago, and Chavez said that this was made by the US president, but the real reason of this affair must be focus in the relation between FARC, Nicolas Sarkozy and Chavez.
In a further analysis you could find here the reason why Hugo Chavez duplicate the acquisition of external debt in the last trip to Argentina, in recompense to the problems he caused to Kirchner’s people with the suitcase affair (Chapter II) - Remember that Argentina had other suitcase affair during Menem’s presidency.
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