Chavez 'sent cash' to help Kirchner win

Chavez 'sent cash' to help Kirchner win

Correspondents in Lima and Miami | December 14, 2007

VENEZUELAN President Hugo Chavez tried to secretly funnel hundreds of thousands of dollars to the campaign of Argentina's new President, the US claimed yesterday.

In a criminal court hearing, US prosecutors accused four men arrested yesterday in Miami - three Venezuelans and a Uruguayan - of involvement in a conspiracy to cover-up an illegal campaign contribution to new Argentinian President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner on behalf of the Venezuelan Government.

The complaint offered the first evidence for an allegation often levelled against Mr Chavez but never proved: that he uses his country's oil wealth to illegally meddle in the politics of his Latin American neighbours.

US prosecutors said that according to a man charged in the case, a suitcase with $US800,000 ($900,000) brought by a Venezuelan man to Buenos Aires was intended as a political contribution in the presidential campaign.

The disclosure came in a court hearing for a criminal complaint against the men, accused of being illegal Venezuelan agents who attempted a cover-up and intimidated a witness in the case.

US prosecutors said the scheme involved the highest levels of Mr Chavez's Government. The complaint, filed in a federal court in Miami, said "neither the true source nor the intended recipient of those cash funds had been disclosed".

But Assistant US Attorney Thomas Mulvihill said in court that one of the men charged in the case said in conversations recorded by the FBI that Cristina Kirchner's campaign was the intended recipient of the money.

Ms Kirchner, the wife of former Argentine president Nestor Kirchner, won the October election and was sworn in on Monday as the South American nation's first elected female president.

Charged with failing to register with the US as an agent of a foreign power are Venezuelan citizens Moises Roman Majonica, 36, Franklin Duran, 40, Carlos Kauffmann, 35, and Uruguayan citizen Rodolfo Wanseele, 40.

All will remain in custody pending a bail hearing next Monday, with pleas set to be entered on December 28.

If convicted, the men each face up to 10 years in federal prison and $US250,000 in fines.

A fifth man is still being sought, but it is not the man who brought the suitcase, Guido Alejandro Antonini Wilson.

The Argentine President's office had no information about the Miami charges, a spokesman said.

"We don't have the slightest idea. We're going to look into it," said the official, who asked not to be identified.

Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro called the charges "a desperate effort by the United States Government using ... the judicial branch for a political, psychological, media war against the progressive governments of the continent".

Mr Chavez has become the Americas' most outspoken critic of US policy and the Bush administration, and once called the American President "the devil" during a speech at the UN.

Mr Antonini, who has dual US-Venezuelan citizenship, is not charged in the case and has said through a lawyer he will co-operate with an Argentine investigation. He has a home near Miami and returned there after the money was seized in Buenos Aires, officials said.

Kenneth L.Wainstein, Assistant US Attorney-General for National Security, said the complaint "outlines an alleged plot by agents of the Venezuelan Government to manipulate an American citizen in Miami in an effort to keep the lid on a burgeoning international scandal".

Evidence against the men includes FBI tape recordings of conversations between some of them and senior officials in Venezuela's office of the Vice-President, intelligence service and Justice Ministry, federal prosecutors said in court.

Mr Duran, at one point, allegedly told Mr Antonini the matter involved "the top of the Venezuelan Government," and said his "future actions might put the life of Antonini's children at risk".

A call to Mr Antonini's telephone number was met with a recording saying it was unlisted.

Mr Majonica and Mr Wanseele asked for the court to appoint them a lawyer. The lawyer for Mr Duran and Mr Kauffmann, Michael Hacker, said his clients were innocent.

"They have led squeaky-clean lives," Mr Hacker said.