Defendant in Venezuelan Suitcase Plot Challenges Law

A Venezuelan businessman accused of acting in the U.S. as an unregistered foreign agent asked a federal judge to dismiss his indictment on the grounds that the law is unconstitutionally vague. Franklin Duran is accused of conspiring to silence Florida businessman Guido Alejandro Antonini Wilson, who carried $800,000 in a suitcase at the center of an Argentine election scandal. On Aug. 4, Antonini flew from Caracas to Buenos Aires, where the valise was seized. Prosecutors say the cash was intended for the campaign of Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, who was elected president of Argentina on Oct. 28. The Venezuelan government provided the cash and its intelligence agency directed a coverup of its source and intended recipient, prosecutors say. The law ``fails to give an average person in Duran's position notice of a duty to register as a foreign agent with the attorney general of the United States,'' defense lawyer Edward Shohat said in a motion filed June 20 in federal court in Miami. ``The statute requires that a person `act' as an agent without providing any definition for this term.''